Road Safety Research Report No. 86
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive:
Pre-driver and Learner
Perspectives on Driving and
Learning
Simon Christmas
SHM, London
May 2008
Department for Transport: London
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CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
5
1
INTRODUCTION
10
2
GOOD DRIVING
12
2.1
What is good driving?
12
2.2
Evidence for good driving
17
2.2.1
Confidence: I am able to deal with this situation
19
2.2.2
Concern: I am looking after you
21
2.2.3
Superiority: I am better than other drivers
22
2.3
The absent social dimension
24
2.4
Driving temptations
30
2.4.1
Peer pressure
30
2.4.2
Adrenaline
34
2.5
3
4
5
Summary
36
GOOD LEARNERS
39
3.1
Concern about readiness to pass
39
3.2
Impatience to pass
43
3.3
A simple segmentation of learners
46
3.4
Summary
47
GOOD LEARNING
49
4.1
Mastering the activity of driving
49
4.2
What role should parents play in helping children master driving?
52
4.3
Experience and attitude
56
4.4
Summary
64
BETTER DRIVERS
66
5.1
Challenges
66
5.2
Opportunities
68
3
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
5.3
6
4
Different learners, different approaches
70
5.3.1 Segment 1: rule observers
71
5.3.2 Segment 2: risk minimisers
71
5.3.3 Segment 3: good neighbours
71
5.3.4 Segment 4: God’s gifts
73
5.3.5 Segment 5: nightmare drivers
75
REFERENCES
78
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The origins of, and influences on, the patterns of attitude and behaviour identified in
earlier research with young drivers aged 17 to 25 were investigated in a series of
workshops with young pre-drivers and learners, their parents and approved driving
instructors (ADIs). The workshops focused in particular on understanding young
pre-drivers’ and learners’ definitions of good driving and their expectations and/or
experiences of the learning process.
Good driving
In our earlier research with 17–25-year-old drivers, we found that participants
defined good driving as the mastery of three different and parallel kinds of activity,
which we called the physical, social and emotional activities of driving.
In this research, we found that the definitions of good driving offered by young predrivers and learners included many references to the physical activity (especially
control and awareness) and emotional activity (especially staying calm). However,
on further probing, some of these definitions turned out to be problematic: in
particular, many participants identified control with being able to drive fast.
Unlike the young drivers in the earlier research, there were almost no references to
the social activity of driving or to the need to be patient and considerate with other
drivers. On the other hand, the young pre-drivers and learners were far more likely
to mention consideration for passengers as a feature of good driving – for instance,
checking that passengers are wearing seat belts.
Pre-drivers’ and learners’ judgements that someone is a good driver are largely
based on the fact that one feels safe in the car with them. The evidence suggests that
this feeling of safety is not based on a cognitive assessment of the driver’s behaviour
but is an affective reaction to messages projected by the driver through their
behaviour. Three types of message in particular seem to have a positive impact on
the feeling of safety:
•
•
•
confidence – I am able to deal with this situation;
concern – I am looking after you (the passenger); and
superiority – I am better than other drivers.
Analysis of these messages reveals some potential sources for patterns identified in
our previous research (Christmas, 2007). The reliance of young drivers on
confidence as a measure of ability and the ‘talent’ model appear to develop from the
way in which confidence messages create a feeling of safety. Plus, the projection of
5
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
superiority may explain why young drivers are broadly forgiving of a tendency to
aggression in their own behaviour.
The context for all of this is the ‘double insulation’ of young passengers, who are
cut off from other drivers not just by the ‘bubble’ of the car but also by the fact that
someone else is driving. Where that other person draws the passenger’s attention to
other drivers, it is as complex (and annoying) physical obstacles, not as people
sharing a common space. This helps to explain why the social activity of driving is
largely absent from the accounts of good driving offered by pre-drivers and learners.
Further research would be valuable to establish exactly how and when the social
activity of driving rises to prominence in the mind of the young pre-driver/learner/
driver. However, this research strongly suggests that this depends on the disruption
of the social space within the car, and, in particular, the ‘safe’ relationship between
parent and child. The presence of an ADI in the car helps to preserve this social
space – making the critical break point the moment after the test when a young
person first drives on their own.
This account may also help to explain why ‘delayers’ (young people who do delay
starting to learn) are more likely to mention the social activity of driving. This group
are more likely to have been driven by their peers; and the experience of being
driven by a very confident but clearly incompetent peer may disrupt the critical link
between projected confidence and feeling safe.
The importance of the moment one drives on one’s own also sheds new light on the
finding from our previous research (Christmas, 2007) that young drivers typically
believe that the social activity of driving is not covered by the formal learning
process, and that one only starts learning to drive after passing the test. It may be
that many young people are only receptive to learning about the social activity of
driving after they have driven on their own, i.e. after they have passed.
Participants in this research were clear that good driving is not just about what you
do but also about what you do not do. In particular, it is important to resist two types
of ‘temptation’ when one starts driving. The first of these is peer pressure.
Strikingly, peer pressure seems to work only one way: to make driving worse, not
better, with a number of young people telling us that their efforts to make friends
drive more safely did not work. A potential mindset difference is apparent here, with
some young drivers seeking to project messages of confidence and superiority (so
ignoring requests to drive more safely), and others seeking to project messages of
concern for passengers (so taking heed of them).
The second temptation is adrenaline, especially for those young drivers who have
been driven fast by a driver who nevertheless projects confidence and makes them
feel safe. However, this kind of behaviour is not necessarily ‘thrill-seeking’ in the
6
full sense of the term. Instead, a number of participants described putting one’s foot
down from time to time as a kind of boredom alleviation.
Good learners
The attitude of a young person during the period of formal learning is a critical
variable in their future behaviour as a driver. Two dimensions were identified which
determine how good a learner will be:
•
On the one hand, the level of concern a learner feels about their readiness to
pass will impact on their willingness to take criticism and listen. A young
person’s concern may be increased either because they have a higher estimation
of the potential consequences of bad driving or because they have a lower
estimation of their own current capability.
•
On the other hand, the level of impatience a learner feels to pass – and to be out
on the road driving – will influence the way in which they engage with the
learning process. Many (though not all) young people are impatient for the
freedom that driving is perceived to bring, with a much smaller number also
being impatient for the experience itself. Impatience can be increased by
competition with peers or siblings (to be the first to pass, in fewer lessons, etc.)
and by the practical costs (money, time) of the learning process.
Taken together, these two dimensions define a simple grid onto which young
learners can be plotted. Learners with a very low level of concern and high level of
impatience provide the greatest cause for concern. Some of these may ‘play the
system’, doing as they are told in lessons and in the test purely to speed up the
process of getting a licence.
Good learning
According to participants in this research, learning to drive has two basic elements:
mastering the activity of driving and getting the right attitude.
First-hand experience – or the experience of watching others drive – was felt to be
critical to mastering the activity of driving, with some participants (young people,
parents and ADIs) feeling that the current testing regime meant that some learners
did not get enough experience before passing. By contrast, many participants were
sceptical about the role of ‘theory’.
There was near universal agreement that the teaching of driving should be left to
professional instructors on the grounds that:
•
•
parents’ knowledge of driving is not up to scratch;
•
parents, lacking dual controls, are at risk with an inexperienced driver.
the instructor–learner relationship is more conducive to feedback and learning
than the parent–child relationship; and
7
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
There was, by contrast, some debate about the appropriateness and value of
supervised practice, with both parents and ADIs disagreeing on this.
A number of parents and ADIs wanted more parent–ADI communication. However,
a challenge arises from the fact that parents are both supports to the learning process
and paying clients. This can create a tension between a parent’s desire to ensure that
the young people get the right amount of experience (analogous with a learner’s
concern about readiness to pass the test) and their desire to ensure value-for-money
(analogous with a learner’s impatience to pass). The latter can create scepticism
about the motives of ADIs among parents and young people, which colours
communication between them.
Experience was also felt to be critical to a person adopting the right attitude to being
a good learner and driver, with a strong emphasis on the need for concrete and
personal experiences in order to change attitudes. Some participants felt that this
might include talking to people with experience of crashes.
For their part, parents discussed using insurance payments and car type as possible
levers to build their children’s responsibility. The view was expressed, however, that
parents need more support or guidance in tackling dangerous driving in their
children. It was also noted that parents may not know about their children’s
dangerous driving.
Some ADIs go further, trying to engineer safe situations which nevertheless feel
dangerous in order to change the attitudes of the most worrying learners. However,
there are clear limits on what they can do – as they cannot actually put anyone at
risk. Many young people took the view that simulated risk, from which fear had
been removed, could never really change an attitude. Some young people and ADIs
also took the view that there is a hardcore of young drivers whose attitudes do not
change even if they actually have an accident, and who can only be stopped by more
punitive approaches.
Better drivers
In the light of this research and our previous research (Christmas, 2007), four
critical gaps in current approaches to driver learning and testing are evident:
1. The relevance gap. Few young people – pre-drivers, learners or novices – see
the standards in the test (and other rules of driving) as relevant to ‘real driving’.
2. The measures gap. Young people have no good way of measuring the
competence of other drivers other than their own feeling of safety, and have no
good way of measuring their own competence as drivers other than their feeling
of confidence.
8
3. The incentives gap. There are a number of disincentives for young people to
spend longer improving their driving pre-test, and few real incentives to carry on
getting better after passing.
4. The motivations gap. A number of young people do not see any real need to get
better, as they start the learning process already confident in their own talent
which is reinforced by their rapidly mastering physical control of the car.
However, there are also some important opportunities to do more:
•
Many young people would be interested in opportunities to develop driving
skills at school or college – providing the learning opportunities are practical
and hands on.
•
Some young people identified PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) or
Citizenship as a natural home in the curriculum for some aspects of learning
about driving.
•
Some parents would welcome more guidance on their role during learning and
after the test, and, if made aware of the impact they are having, these parents
might also think more about their behaviour as a driver when their children are
in the passenger seat.
•
Some experienced ADIs already seek to tailor their instruction to different
mindsets and attitudes in young people, and more guidance and support for
ADIs in this area could prove very effective.
Drawing on both phases of our research, we propose a pragmatic segmentation of
young pre-drivers, learners and drivers, with the following five segments (see Table
5.1 for a fuller summary):
•
•
•
•
•
rule observers, for whom good driving is about following rules and standards;
risk minimisers, for whom good driving is risk-free driving;
good neighbours, for whom good driving is sociable driving;
God’s gifts, for whom good driving is confident driving; and
nightmare drivers, for whom good driving is entirely irrelevant.
9
1
INTRODUCTION
Earlier research conducted by SHM with young drivers aged 17 to 25 (Christmas,
2007) provided fresh insights into the way in which young people experience the
learning process, their definition of its goal, good driving, and the implications of
these for driving behaviour. Key findings from this earlier research included the
following:
1. Young drivers define good driving as the mastery of three different and parallel
kinds of activity:
(a) driving as a physical activity – safely controlling and guiding a
physical object through a complex physical environment, including
reading and anticipating the behaviour of other drivers;
(b) driving as a social activity – operating in a shared space in a way that
ensures everyone is kept happy, and in a way that builds and maintains
a desired image of oneself as a driver; and
(c) driving as an emotional activity – preserving an appropriate frame of
mind to drive well in the face of distractions and annoyances.
2. Young drivers are highly sceptical about the formal learning they do for the test,
and about the test itself. Many express the view that one starts to learn after one
has passed the test and draw particular attention to the perceived failure of the
formal learning process to address the ‘unwritten’ rules of driving – largely
pertaining to the social activity of driving.
3. Young drivers rely heavily on their own feelings of confidence as a measure of
their competence. This can lead to a vicious circle, in which the feeling of
confidence becomes the grounds for feeling confident. In some young people,
this is exacerbated by a ‘talent model’ of driving – put crudely, a belief that
good drivers are born rather than made. There is evidence, however, that
overconfidence may be less a cognitive error than a deliberate social act, aimed
at positioning oneself in a particular way with passengers and other drivers.
The current research was designed to extend the insights of this previous research
(Christmas, 2007) and, in particular, to investigate the possible origins of, and
influences on, the patterns identified in our previous research.
The main phase of research consisted of nine qualitative workshops with groups of
young people (85 in total), covering a range of different types of pre-driver and
learner between the ages of 13 and 20. A further four workshops were with parents
of some of the participants in these workshops (24 in total), along with three group
interviews with ADIs (11 in total). Participants were recruited to ensure a mix of
gender, social class and ethnicity, as well as diversity on other key dimensions (such
as previous experience on a motorbike or moped). Workshops were held in five
locations (Stockport, Yate, York environs, Leicester and Hounslow) in order to
10
ensure a mix of rural and urban pre-drivers and learners. Table 1.1 summarises the
composition of the groups.
Table 1.1: Composition of the workshop groups
Group
13–14-year-olds
15–16-year-olds
17–20-year-old learners
17–20-year-old ‘delayers’
Parents
ADIs
No. of workshops
2
3
2
2
4*
3
Total participants
20 (10 male, 10 female)
27 (14 male, 13 female)
19 (9 male, 10 female)
19, (9 male, 10 female)
24 (11 fathers, 13 mothers)
11
* One parent workshop was recruited for each of the four groups of young people, i.e. one group
of parents of 13–14-year-olds, one group of parents of 15–16-year-olds, etc.
As we noted in our previous research (Christmas, 2007), young people are as diverse
as any other group of people and we in no way wish to suggest that there is a typical
‘young person’ or ‘young person’s experience’. In line with our previous research,
this report seeks to identify the key themes emerging from the analysis of workshop
findings – both the points of commonality and key dimensions of difference. Again
we have sought to illustrate our points with extensive quotations, so that readers may
check our interpretation against the words of the young people themselves, their
parents and their instructors.
We have also been helped immeasurably in this research by the opportunity to speak
to a number of road safety officers, many of whom are already taking practical steps
to tackle the kinds of challenge identified in this research. We are very grateful to
the Local Authority Road Safety Officers’ Association (LARSOA) for facilitating
these contacts. Their input has greatly aided our understanding of this field.
However, the opinions offered in this report are entirely our own, and may not reflect
the views of any individual consulted.
11
2
GOOD DRIVING
In our earlier research with 17–25-year-old drivers (Christmas, 2007), we found that
participants defined good driving as the mastery of three different and parallel kinds
of activity:
•
driving as a physical activity – safely controlling and guiding a physical object
through a complex physical environment, including reading and anticipating the
behaviour of other drivers;
•
driving as a social activity – operating in a shared space in a way that ensures
everyone is kept happy, and in a way that builds and maintains a desired image
of oneself as a driver; and
•
driving as an emotional activity – preserving an appropriate frame of mind to
drive well in the face of distractions and annoyances.
In the current research, we were keen to find out how the definition of good driving
offered by pre-learners and learners would compare.1 Section 2.1 offers a brief
descriptive overview of the key points of similarity and difference, the significance
of which are then discussed further in the sections that follow.
2.1
What is good driving?
References to the physical activity of driving were common in the accounts of good
driving offered by participants. Control of the car was singled out by a number of
participants as a critical feature of good driving:
‘[My dad] has a great sense of accuracy with his driving. He’s very poised.
Knows what he’s doing. Seven tonne trucks down to small cars, he knows
it immediately. He has awareness of how much room he’s got – there’s no
chance of crashing.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘My sister Haley. She just . . . she can park well.’ [M, 13]
‘She [mum] controls the car – she can park quite well.’ [F. 14]
‘You have to be in control of the car and not let the car control you.’
[F, 14]
‘[He’s a good driver] because he’s confident. It’s his mum’s car, but she
can’t get it out of the garage.’ [M, 15]
1
12
In order to make the task of creating a definition of good driving more concrete –
especially for the youngest age groups – participants were first asked to identify and
describe a good driver. After this, they were then asked to create a definition of good
driving based on their examples.
Participants also placed considerable emphasis on awareness:
‘She [mum] doesn’t get into any accidents. She’s quite safe when she
drives. She’s looking around, looking at her mirrors.’ [M, 15]
‘He [my brother] looks . . . in the mirrors and everything. He looks out for
bikes and everything.’ [F, 14]
‘My dad [is a good driver]. He’s been driving for ages, so he’s serious and
he’s never crashed or anything. He’s always aware of everyone else around
him. He’s always looking around to see what they’re doing.’ [F, 15]
‘My friend Natalie. She’s been driving for about two years and she’s just
really cool. Like she won’t do anything if she doesn’t think it’s the right
time or if she things it’s gong to be dangerous. And she’s just always
checking everything, just making sure, observing everything around her
. . . She’s constantly looking in her mirrors and you can just see that she’s
looking around at everything that is happening around her.’ [F, 16]
The greatest emphasis in the accounts offered by the participants, however, was
placed on driving as an emotional activity, and, in particular, the importance of
staying calm in various potentially stressful situations:
‘My dad – he’s like really mellow. It’s personality. People cutting through
lanes without signals, it doesn’t phase him. My mum’s always trying to go
a bit faster, like over the speed bump, then she brakes just before it, then
goes really fast. With my dad I don’t feel car sick, but with my mum I feel
like my guts are going. He’s very calm. Nothing phases him.’ [F, 18,
Learner]
‘[My dad] used to drive those big cargo lorries and those were the worst.
That’s how he got used to not getting angry, because everyone moans at
the lorry drivers. So he used to be [angry] but now he’s just normal and he
don’t care if people shout at him or anything.’ [F, 16]
‘My dad [is a good driver] because he plans journeys, is good with a sense
of direction, always knows the signs and routes. He doesn’t get angry –
concentration levels, he’s quite calm. It’s when I go somewhere I don’t
know that it panics me.’ [F, 20, Learner]
‘[My mum] is really patient. She always talks to me in the car, about
what’s going on in the car, she makes me feel safe. My dad is the contrast
– going down to my auntie’s at Xmas, we nearly crashed. He wasn’t really
focusing. If he’s getting stressed or having an argument it’s quite often, but
if he’s calm or not in a rush it’s fine.’ [F, 17, Learner]
13
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘My dad and my brother – they’re always relaxed, seem like they’re in
control all the time. They’re just always in control, always laid-back when
driving.’ [M, 20, Learner]
On closer probing, a number of the accounts of the physical and emotional activity
of driving revealed more problematic views (from a road-safety point of view) on
good driving:
‘[My dad is a good driver.] He goes fast, but he like controls it. He
watches to see other people, and he knows what they’re going to do. Like
on a motorway, he’ll move. He’s watching to see what will happen.
Sometimes he skids and stuff, and he has had crashes, but I know he’s a
good driver. Compared to my mum: she can’t park or anything . . .
He gets wound up all the time. It gets on my nerves. Swears at people. He
thinks he’s better than everyone else. I would like to drive like him
because he knows what he’s doing . . . He’s had crashes and that.’ [F, 16]
In particular, the claim that someone had good physical control of the car was often
backed up with an observation about how fast they could drive:
Question: ‘How do you know he’s good?’
‘The speed he drives. He’s fast on the roads . . . I like being in the car more
with him than my mum, because she’s like too slow.’ [M, 15]
‘My cousin Ray. He drives fast but uses the mirrors. He’s never crashed
and is cautious about checking mirrors. He’s been driving for about six
years. He goes to cruises – 147 on the dual carriageway.’ [M, 18, Delayer]
‘[Good driver] Jeremy Clarkson. He does a programme called Top Gear.
I’ve seen him drive cars around this airfield and he’s quite good at it. He
drives quite quick and keeps control of it.’ [M, 13]
‘[Good driver] Michael Schumacher. He’s always in control of the car, he’s
confident and he knows he’s good at it. Obviously he’s won the F1 title. If I
were in a car with him, I’d feel safe because he can drive well. If he can do
it in an F1 car at 200 mph, then he can do it in a Peugeot.’ [M, 14]
‘[Good driver] Police drivers who do the high-speed chases. They have to
have lots of experience and training. My instructor was telling me, they
have to be able to name everything they’ve been over, like a drain cover.
They have to notice every little detail. At high speeds they can actually
control a car and know what’s going on.’ [M, 18, Learner]
14
‘Speed [makes him a good driver]. He slows down at the right times and
doesn’t get caught by speed cameras or anything.’ [M, 16]
Although more exotic examples of excellent physical control were also offered:
‘Some people can drive quite fast but still be safe.’ [F, 20, Learner]
‘My friend drives with his knees but he’s still a well good driver.’ [M, 18,
Learner]
In a similar way, ‘emotional calm’ turned out, in some cases, to conceal less
desirable mental states:
‘I had my dad and then realised how many points he has, so I scribbled it
out. I feel safer with my mum, but I don’t know why. My dad’s quite an
aggressive driver: if he sees an opening he’ll go for it.’ [M, 16]
‘My dad’s a good driver, but he’s certainly no role model because he’s
recently been done for drink driving. He’s a very responsible man. But one
day it happened and he’s been banned.’ [M, 19, Learner]
‘My mate’s a really good driver but he recently got done for drink driving.
But I was really pissed as well.’ [M, 17, Learner]
‘I’ve been quite bad, getting in the car with people who were really pissed,
in the countryside place. I was drunk as well, I needed to get home, can’t
be bothered to pay for a taxi.’ [M, 20, Learner]
In line with the young drivers who participated in our earlier research, a number of
participants in this research were sceptical about the relevance to good driving of the
law or the standards set in the test:
Facilitator: ‘Why is the Highway Code important?’
‘That way you don’t get into trouble. If something happens, you can’t be
accused of doing something bad.’ [M, 13]
‘You could be a good driver but not want to stick to the Highway Code.
You could still be a good driver.’ [M, 14 – note, this participant’s father
was a driving instructor]
‘No-one drives like how they do on the test.’ [M, 18, Learner]
‘The test is just to legitimise the fact you can drive, but doesn’t mean you
can drive well.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
15
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
Although others did include being law-abiding as part of their definition of gooddriving:
‘[My dad] sticks to the speed limit and doesn’t go too fast. He’ll go faster
if he can go faster, but he’ll stick to the speed limit.’ [M, 16]
‘[My mum] drives differently to others. She doesn’t break the speed limit.
Sometimes people drive fast and break the speed limits.’ [F, 13]
Overall, the accounts offered of the physical and emotional activities of driving by
the participants in this research show broadly similar patterns to the accounts
offered by young drivers in our previous research – albeit with predictably less
sophistication at the level of detail.
However, when we turn to the social activity of driving, a major difference emerges.
Indeed, one of the most striking features of the accounts of good driving offered by
participants in this research was the near complete lack of emphasis on the social
activity of driving. There were some exceptions to this general rule, especially in the
workshops with young people aged 17–20 who had not yet started learning to drive
(an observation we shall pick up later). Overall, however, words such as ‘patient’,
‘courteous’, ‘considerate’ and ‘polite’ – which had dominated definitions of good
driving for those already driving – were largely absent from the definitions offered
by pre-drivers and learners. Indeed, some parents independently drew attention to
this difference of perspective when reviewing their own thoughts about good
driving:
‘I don’t think my son will come up with things like that [patience and
respect]. He’s more: a good driver is somebody who is in control of the
car. That would be his perception at the moment.’ [Mother of M, 13]
‘A good driver is somebody who can keep a BMW on the road doing 90
mph around a corner – that’s a good driver according to my son.’ [Mother
of M, 13]
On the other hand, while references to courtesy to other drivers were largely
missing, references to concern for passengers as a defining feature of good driving
were much more prominent in the accounts offered by pre-drivers – especially the
younger age groups (under 17). In particular, a surprisingly large number of
participants included some kind of reference to making passengers wear seat belts in
their definitions of good driving.:
‘If all the people in the car have got their seat belts on, it shows the driver
is a good driver. It shows the driver has not pulled off with passengers
without their seat belt on.’ [M, 14]
16
‘[Good driver] My boyfriend. He’s just turned 20, and he’s been driving
for two years. He’s a careful driver and he always has people in the car and
he respects them. He wouldn’t disrespect them by putting them at risk. He
sticks to the speed limits.’ [F, 16]
So why does this striking difference exist between the accounts of good driving
offered by pre-drivers and learners on the one hand and by young drivers on the
other? To start to answer this question, first it is helpful to take a step back and
consider on what basis pre-drivers and learners are making their judgements of good
driving.
2.2
Evidence for good driving
On what basis do pre-driver and learners distinguish between good and bad driving
when they see it? The evidence from our participants shows that comparison with
external standards plays no real role in the judgement. Even those young people who
selected good drivers on the grounds that they ‘do everything they are meant to do’
were, on further probing, unable to say what any of these things actually are that one
is ‘meant to do’.
A more common and more concrete piece of evidence offered for good driving was
not having had an accident (or at least not having had an accident that was one’s own
fault):
‘He [my dad] drives a lot for work and he hasn’t crashed yet. Sometimes
he sticks to the speed limits, when he’s near a speed camera.’ [M, 15]
‘[My step dad] He’s been driving the longest out of my family. He knows
the road. He’s been driving for 20 years and he hasn’t had any accidents
that I know of yet. He tends to speed a little but he doesn’t go miles over
the limit.’ [M, 15]
‘He’s [recently qualified friend] never crashed. And all his mates have all
crashed in the first month.’ [M, 16]
Question: ‘Why is your dad a good driver?’
‘Because I’m still here!’ [M, 16]
Of course, avoiding accidents is a positive thing but it is worth noting that, for some
pre-drivers, this ability to avoid accidents is very much presented in terms of having
the level of control of the car needed to get you out of difficult situations, rather than
the judgement to avoid getting into those situations in the first place. Consider the
following story, offered by the participant as an example of excellent driving:
17
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘Like a couple of times he was driving and you know when a bus is
stopping there, he’ll overtake him, right. So he had the right of way and he
went, and the bus didn’t indicate out. So the bus was still there. The bus
didn’t check its mirrors so he was coming out and went into the car . . . I
was sat in the passenger seat. I saw the bus coming so close and the buses
from this side were coming as well. So we was going to get sandwiched. I
don’t know what he done, but he just sped, went a bit faster, swerved in
and out and he just got away from it. As soon as he got away from it he
parked it down the side and asked if we were alright. So he knows when
something’s going to happen. He’ll react within seconds . . . Two of my
friends have offroaded their car and mad. And the way he drives, I was
seriously thinking my brother would crash within the first few weeks, but
he hasn’t. He’s got through it all and every single time he hasn’t made a
mistake, as far as I’ve seen.’ [M, 16]
While the past-tense quality of not having had accidents was an important piece of
evidence in participant’s estimates, far more significant was the future-tense
estimation that the driver in question would not have accidents in the future. Again
and again this boiled down to the simple fact of feeling safe with someone:
‘It feels safe and that. He knows what he’s doing. He’s confident.’ [F, 14]
‘[My mum] knows what she’s doing. I feel safe when she’s driving, I can
tell she’s not doing anything wrong.’
Question: ‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t know.’ [F, 14]
‘He [my dad] is careful and quite fast at the same time. He makes me feel
safe when I’m in the car with him. He does stick to the speed on like a
normal road, but not when he’s on the motorway.’ [M, 13]
‘He [dad] makes you feel quite safe. When you’re sat in the back and
watch him – he knows what he’s doing.’ [F, 17, Learner]
‘My dad [is a good driver]. He’s very cautious. He’s never made me jump.
Not like my mum . . . She’s never crashed, so must be alright, but dad’s
better.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘In the car I feel safe even though he’s quite fast.’ [M, 15]
‘Some people could say my step-dad is a bad driver cos he’s been done for
drunk driving, but you feel ok with him.’ [M, 15]
‘My brother is a good driver. I feel safe in his car because he’s aware of
what’s going on, compared to me and my sister. When I’m in her car I’m
18
nervous. It’s probably because he’s been driving longer. I don’t know.’
[M, 19, Learner]
‘My mum [is a good driver]. She’s calm and I feel safe in the car with her.
She’s just aware. She’s not in her own world.’ [F, 19, Learner]
‘My mum has driving involved in her job, but I am generally scared of her.
She’s stressed out and stalling all the time. Experience helps, but not
always.’ [M, 19, Learner]
‘It doesn’t make much difference who’s driving, as long as I trust them.’
[F, 15]
As some of the quotations above indicate, the feeling of safety may be linked to
some broad description of behaviour, such as being cautious, calm or in control.
However, it is an open question whether these observations of behaviour are being
used as the basis for a cognitive assessment of safety or whether they are, in fact,
post-rationalisations of a more fundamental affective state which is not based on
an assessment of driving behaviour at all. If the latter interpretation is true, then it is
the young person’s definition of good driving behaviour which is derived from the
feeling of safety – rather than the feeling of safety being based on a prior
understanding of good driving.
In fact, participants’ responses provided considerable support for the latter
interpretation. The critical factor in feeling safe appears to be how the driver
positions themselves with respect to the passenger and to other drivers on the road.
It is the messages embedded in driver behaviour, rather than an analysis of that
behaviour, which build or erode the feeling of safety. In particular, driving behaviour
may project the following key messages, which are discussed in more detail in the
sub-sections that follow:
•
•
•
confidence – I am able to deal with this situation;
concern – I am looking after you; and
superiority – I am better than other drivers.
2.2.1 Confidence: I am able to deal with this situation
Fear is infectious. A number of participants pointed out how a driver who is nervous
will make his or her passengers feel nervous too – and therefore unsafe as well:
‘My dad is really calm – unlike my mum who’s a bit crazy . . . Calmness
helps you relax as a passenger, you don’t think they’re all manic. My mum
will see a lorry, she’ll get all scared and nervous, then you get all scared
and nervous. On the other hand. . . he does always think that he’s got the
19
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
right of way compared to other drivers. He’s a bit forceful.’ [F, 17,
Learner]
‘She doesn’t want an accident. She’s not being over the top, she’s being
careful. She is quite confident actually, to be honest, and that makes a
difference. It would make you feel scared yourself [if she weren’t].’ [F, 15]
‘My dad. He’s experienced, driving a long time, always in control. Quite
focused. Sometimes my mum is having a conversation, gets flustered . . .
When you’re sat in the back and watch him – he knows what he’s doing.’
[F, 17, Learner]
‘My dad and mum are the same, but I prefer dad. My mum takes ages to
move out, my dad does it quickly. He’s more controlled and everything
and doesn’t worry. My mum goes on the motorways and worries. My dad
doesn’t need to think about it. She just goes on all the time: I just think
‘‘get on with it’’.’ [M, 16]
‘My step mum is unsafe – she’s a bit panicky and jumpy.’ [M, 13]
The key point at issue in each of these cases is not how the driver is driving but the
messages they are sending out to their passengers about their emotional state.
Sometimes, however, what we might call the ‘emotional smoothness’ of a confident
driver was linked to a physical smoothness in the driving experience – especially for
learners, for whom the nerves of starting out may be directly linked to the difficulty
of mastering the controls of the car:
‘It’s just like, when [dad] is driving it’s always smooth, never jerky. He
never seems to get into any bother.’ [M, 15]
‘My dad drives pretty fast, he’s got a nice safe car and things. He’s very
smooth and I’m very jittery and rigid.’ [M, 17, Learner]
It is worth making a connection here to the finding in our previous research that
young drivers use their own feelings of confidence as the main measure of how good
they are as a driver. In the context of the current research with pre-drivers, it makes
sense to suggest that this reliance on confidence is an extension of the reliance, as
passengers, on feelings of safety which are based on projected confidence. The
reliance on feeling safe as evidence for good driving, in the absence of any detailed
understanding of what good driving behaviour actually looks like, may also explain
another theme from our first phase of research. In a number of cases, there is
evidence that participants attribute the impressive combination of emotional and
physical smoothness to something like natural talent:
20
‘It seems to come really natural to him [dad]. He’s never been in an
accident that was his fault. He seems to read the road really easily.’
[M, 15]
‘He’s [dad] been driving like years and only ever had one crash. He’s just
dead good at driving. He can drive really fast. He’s never had a crash. You
always feel safe. He’s just dead good at driving.’ [F, 13]
‘My brother [is a good driver] because he has judgement. He drives very
fast. He has good judgement . . . If he’s overtaking someone or something,
it’s whether he’ll make it or whatever. He’s a natural.’ [M, 18, Learner]
‘Ability obviously you can learn, because they test it. Confidence – that
you’re like born with.’ [M, 14]
2.2.2 Concern: I am looking after you
Messages received about a driver’s state of confidence or nervousness are critical
elements of a passenger’s feeling of safety. Equally important, however, is the belief
that one’s own wellbeing is an issue for the driver. As was noted in Section 2.1,
showing concern for passengers was an important theme in the definitions offered of
good driving. Evidence of this concern, or a clear motive for concern (as in the last
quotation below), was critical to the feeling of safety:
‘She’s a couple of years older than me, so she’s been driving for a few
years. And she’s always asking if we feel comfortable and she’s always
looking for everything.’ [F, 16]
‘[Good driver] My mum. I’m one of seven children. My mum’s always had
babies in her car and doesn’t want to cause an accident with them.’ [F, 15]
‘My manager [of my band] is always careful because we are young and he
doesn’t want to crash busloads of 16-year-olds. He’ll get done by the
management.’ [M, 17, Learner]
In many instances, the feeling of safety was explicitly based on the relationship of
the driver to the passenger. These examples are some of the clearest cases of
definitions of good driving behaviour being derived from the feeling of safety, rather
than vice-versa:
‘He’s [Dad] never had a crash. You trust him. You just feel safe. When
you’re in the car with your mates you don’t feel as safe.’
Question: ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Cos it’s your dad. You trust your dad.’
Question: ‘With mates you don’t feel safe?’
21
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘Sometimes. There’s been a few near misses.’
Question: ‘What do you notice about what your dad’s doing?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t notice. I’m just in the car.’ [M, 16]
Question: ‘Why aren’t you nervous?’
‘Because he’s my dad, and I know he’s careful when it’s me because I’m
his daughter and that.’ [F, 16]
‘I really feel safe with him [Dad]. He’s always protected me. He makes me
feel safe.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
2.2.3 Superiority: I am better than other drivers
So far we have seen how a driver can make a passenger feel safe if they project
confidence about the situation and concern for the passenger. However, what about
the other drivers on the road? Does a driver contribute to their passengers’ feelings
of safety, for instance, by projecting consideration or courtesy towards other drivers?
Sadly, the answer seems to be no. As we have already seen in Section 2.1, predrivers and learners seem to be almost oblivious to the social activity of driving as
defined by young drivers. Perhaps this is not so surprising if drivers are in some way
insulated from other drivers by the ‘bubble’ of the car, and young passengers are,
arguably, doubly insulated – by the ‘bubble’ of the car, and by the fact that someone
else is driving:
‘The problem with car driving, I’m sure we’re all familiar, is you get in the
car and you are in an insulated environment, you are cut off, to some
extent, from the rest of the world.’ [ADI]
Question: ‘Are there things outside the car too?’
‘I don’t know.’ [M, 15]
In contrast to the definitions offered by young drivers in our previous research,
which emphasised the shared social space of the road, pre-drivers and learners
focused on the social environment within the car. This is not, of course, to say that
pre-drivers are unaware of other cars on the road:
‘When you’re sitting in the passenger seat you’re not sitting there with
your eyes closed. You’re just as aware as the person that’s driving the car.
If you’re coming up to a junction, you’ll naturally look for them as well
and sometimes they ask you [not clear]. So sometimes you take part in the
actual driving. They say: ‘‘is your side clear?’’’ [M, 16]
The evidence suggests, however, that they are aware of those cars as complex
physical obstacles (part of the physical activity of driving) rather than as other
22
drivers with whom road space needs to be shared. In one of the workshops parents
discussed the difference between a pre-driver’s mechanical understanding of the
road and a more nuanced view developed through experience:
‘Well, sometimes when I brake and I go, ‘‘oh God’’, and Richard will say,
‘‘mum, you had right of way there, why didn’t you pull in . . .?’’’ [Mother
of M, 17, Learner]
‘But whether you’ve got right of way or not, if you think, well, he’s going
to come on, come what may, I’ll give way.’ [Father of F, 17, Learner]
‘That’s experience, because a younger one would go, whether he was
coming or not.’ [Father of M, 18, Learner]
This way of seeing other drivers on the road is almost certainly not helped by the
way in which the attention of pre-drivers is drawn to those other drivers. There was
no evidence that the good drivers identified by our participants ever talked about
other cars on the road as containing people with whom space needs to be shared.
Although there was plenty of evidence that they talked about these other cars as
annoying and erratic obstacles:
‘He [dad] sometimes shouts at other people. It sort of embarrasses me.
But no-one ever does anything to him really. He’s always commenting like
‘‘He’s a bad driver’’.’ [M, 15]
‘He’s [dad] aware of other people on the road.’
Question: ‘How can you tell?’
‘He’s normally shouting at them!’ [F, 17, Learner]
‘She [my mum] pays attention to people on the road.’
Question: ‘How do you know she’s paying attention?’
‘She acknowledges things that people have done wrong.’ [F, 14]
‘My dad points out other bad drivers. He says their driving too close to the
other car.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘When he sees someone driving badly, he doesn’t speak about them in a
nice way.’ [F, 16]
Comments like these do not just reinforce the perception of other drivers as
annoying and erratic obstacles, they also serve to position the driver in a way that
further contributes to the passenger’s feeling of safety: as someone who is better at
driving than others on the roads. Of course, this only applies if the comments also
project confidence as well: getting flustered by other people’s bad driving does not
contribute to a passenger’s feeling of safety, but getting angry with them can. A
driver does not contribute to a passenger’s feeling of safety by communicating
23
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
courtesy and consideration for other cars on the road but by communicating
superiority to them.
Before leaving this topic, it is also worth noting a possible connection to an
observation made in our previous research with young drivers (Christmas, 2007). In
that research, we found that young drivers described the emotional activity of
driving in terms of a balance between being too aggressive on the one hand and too
cowed by other drivers on the other hand. We also noted, however, that this balance
was not perfect: people were broadly forgiving of a tendency to aggression in their
own behaviour. It is not unreasonable to suggest that the source of this pattern lies in
a similar imbalance in pre-driving days, when confident aggression contributed to
feelings of safety as a passenger in a way that flustered submission never could.
2.3
The absent social dimension
In Section 2.2, we have argued that pre-drivers’ estimates of good driving are based
not on a cognitive analysis of driving behaviour but on an affective response to
messages sent out by the driver around confidence, concern (for the passenger) and
superiority (over other drivers). The pre-driver passenger is doubly insulated from
the other people with whom road-space is shared and, for them, the salient social
arena is not on the road but within the car.
Given this, it is not hard to return to the problem posed at the end of Section 2.1 and
see why the social activity of driving – so prominent in the definitions offered by
young drivers – is replaced in the accounts of pre-drivers and learners by an
emphasis on looking after passengers. In particular, we have seen that drivers are
likely to draw attention to other drivers as complex physical obstacles, not as people
sharing a common space. The descriptions offered by young people and their
parents about the kinds of conversation they had about driving while in the car made
it clear that the focus of these conversations was entirely on the physical activity of
driving:
‘When [daughter] was about 15 she used to ask you what gear, and why
you were moving into that gear, because she’s been desperate to learn.
She’s always wanted to learn.’ [Mother of F, 17, Learner]
‘In the car I feel safe because he [dad] does everything right. He checks
his mirrors in the right places. He’s taught me as well – like when to
check your mirrors and all that. I watch him as well. I’m learning from
him.’ [M, 14]
‘My dad asks me questions: ‘‘What have I got to do next?’’ It’s annoying
but it really helps.’ [F, 17, Learner]
24
‘Which is why, when I’ve got [my daughter] in the car, and she’s sitting in
the passenger seat, then I’ll try and give a bit of a running commentary,
like you do on the advanced test, you’ve got to give a running commentary
of the hazards that you perceive ahead, and that sort of thing, so that she’s
got a little bit more idea of what I’m looking for on the road.’ [Father of F,
17, Learner]
‘She knows everything about the car, if you ask her about the gas,
clutches. She has never sat down on the driver’s seat, but she knows
everything. She knows the signs when we are going on the motorway.’
Question: ‘And how has she learnt all that?’
‘Well, by watching television I think. She picked it up somehow but she
knows a lot more about the signs and everything.’ [Father of F, 13]
This lack of awareness of the social activity of driving can be very problematic.
When young people finally get behind the wheel – and a number of those we spoke
to had done this at some point before the age of 17 – their initial focus is likely to
be on the basic physical control of the car. For many, indeed, these first experiences
will be in off-road conditions which explicitly factor out any social dimension of
driving. For those young people who quickly master gears and steering (perhaps
drawing on earlier experience with a motorbike or moped), the result can be an
increase in confidence:
‘I’ve drove my mum’s car. I couldn’t do it at first. I kept stalling. But when
I could do it, it was alright. It was in the car park. It made me more
confident.’ [M, 15]
‘I’ve been behind the wheel on the beach, in my dad’s car. He asked me if
I wanted to. It felt good. I think it will make me more confident.’ [F, 14]
‘I had a pre-17 lesson. We went on some estate. With an instructor. It was
pretty good. When I started I was pretty nervous, but as I kept on going it
got better and I got more confident. Just driving round and changing gears
– gives you more confidence when you go out on the roads.’ [M, 15]
‘We just drove along, drove around, round Ashford, and whoa . . . Then we
came back and I’d never been so happy in my life because I found it so
easy with the gears and everything, because when you ride a motorbike it’s
exactly the same thing, but you use your hands.’ [M, 16]
‘So you get more confidence when you’re behind the wheel before you go
with your instructor . . . when you get in with your driving instructor,
you’re making a good first impression . . . Then your driving instructor
will think: at least he’s got a feel, he’s confident behind the wheel.’ [M, 16]
25
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
Combined with a lack of awareness of the social activity of driving, this first flush of
confidence can translate into a belief that one pretty much knows how to drive:
‘I’ve been driving for about two years. [Up at friend’s farm.] I think I’m
alright. It’s just the signs and that that I’m worrying about.’ [M, 13]
Some parents, in particular, expressed concerns on this score – although they were
not necessarily able to articulate clearly what it was that their children were lacking:
‘He used to have a mini that he used to race with one of his friends on a
private track, so he can drive . . . So he thinks that by the time he is 17 and
a half he would have passed. He doesn’t realise the ins and outs of the test,
he just thinks because he can change gear, stop and go, he can do it. But
there is a lot more to it.’ [Mother of M, 13]
‘Because he’s had this sort of driving experience off-road, so he knows the
basic mechanics of steering the car and changing gear and things like that,
but it’s the road sense and all the rules of the road [that he lacks].’ [Father
of F, 17, Learner; describing character]
In one instance, a parent’s description suggested that they too lacked a sense that
there might be more to driving than the physical activity of controlling the car:
‘He [14-year-old son] has driven a car, driven tractors, forklift. He’s got a
motorbike . . . All illegal apart from the motorbike . . . I’ve been in the car
and he’s quite safe.’
Question: ‘Who did he learn it from?’
‘I think he’s probably just watched us and just took it from there – it just
comes natural to him. He’s one of those kids that picks things up easy like
that.’
Question: ‘Do you think he’s actually got quite a good idea of what goes
on, on the road?’
‘Oh yes, most definitely. He’s good at reversing, parking . . . I mean when
he’s been on the forklift, I mean you’ve got to be careful on forklifts
because you’ve got to be in the right position at the right time and he just
seems to have that knack.’ [Mother of M, 14]
Advanced driving instructors (ADIs) also described the importance of trying to
introduce young people to the social activity of driving as part of the learning
process:
‘People come to me and they say, ‘‘I want to know how to drive’’. All they
intend is to pass their test. But when they’ve passed their test, most of the
time they can’t really drive. They know how to move; it’s the difference
between moving the car out from one place, changing gears along the
26
road, and actually knowing what’s happening on the road. The road is
shared by lots of people. There’s rules. If everybody follows the rules then
everything goes fine, and you understand how the car operates, you
understand why they make the rules on the road.’ [ADI]
‘It’s a social contract, effectively. If you don’t take part in that social
contract, and, as you’re saying, agree to abide by the rules, you’re going to
be stuffed. And what I try to do, towards the end of a course of driving
lessons, when people have already got a driving test booked, is I’m trying
to make sure that they really can drive independently.’ [ADI]
All of which leaves us facing an important question. We have seen that pre-drivers
lack the awareness that young drivers have of the social activity of driving; that this
gap in their understanding can be very problematic when they start learning to drive;
and that plausible explanations for the gap can be found in their experiences of
being a passenger and, in particular, in the experience of ‘feeling safe’. But when
and why does the gap get filled in?
One of the striking features of the current research was that mention of the social
activity of driving was not only largely lacking from the accounts offered by predrivers aged up to 17, but also from the accounts offered by learners. One might
anticipate that actually getting behind the wheel and onto the road and experiencing
what it’s like to drive would be the moment of ‘rude awakening’, but the evidence
does not seem consistent with this idea.
So what is going on? One possible explanation more in tune with the evidence is
that, for a proper awareness of the social space of driving to develop, the social
space within the car has to be disrupted first –in particular, the ‘safe’ relationship
between parent and child. While a person is learning with an instructor, however,
this disruption is delayed. It is striking, for instance, how much emphasis
participants placed on the need to have an instructor with whom one felt
comfortable, and who would not make one feel nervous or knock one’s confidence.
Indeed, a young person who is not made to feel safe (most of the time) by their
instructor may be just as likely to change instructors as to think that there is
something wrong with their own driving. The instructor takes over the role of a
driver in providing an extra layer of ‘insulation’ from the social space of the road, by
giving instructions, managing dual controls and sustaining one’s confidence with
appropriate messages:
‘You need to know the instructor. Because you know what he’s going to
do.’ [M, 14]
‘You don’t feel right in a car with someone you don’t know. You don’t
know anything about them.’ [M, 13]
27
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘You have to like your driving instructor. They have such a big impact,
like teachers have a big impact. If you don’t like your instructor, you
won’t enjoy what you’re doing. They’ve got to know where you’re coming
from, because you’re going to be nervous and they need to understand.
And they need to be down-to-earth, more of a friend. You listen to your
friends more than a teacher. If you feel relaxed you will be able to take in
what they’re saying.’ [F, 16]
Instead the critical breakpoint comes after the test, when one drives on one’s own for
the first time:
‘[After passing] they’re not used to being on their own. They’ve just spent
the past 6 to 10, 12 months with somebody sitting next to them. And the
first time they drive on their own is the afternoon after they’ve passed the
driving test. If they’ve got a car sat on the driveway, you drop them off,
and they say ‘‘oh, I’m off up so and so this afternoon’’. I tell them, you
take a friend with you. Because all of a sudden they’re on their own.’
[ADI]
The idea that there is a disruption of the social space within the car that precipitates
a greater awareness of the shared space outside the car may also help to explain
another phenomenon noted in this research – that young people in the ‘delayer’
groups (those who were old enough to start driving but had chosen not to) were far
more likely to draw attention to the social activity of driving and, on a more general
level, the importance of a ‘good attitude’ to good driving:
‘There’s nothing in the test about being considerate. They should test how
much you care about other people.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
‘There’s no way to get people to drive the way they should be driving all
the time if they’ve got the wrong attitude.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
‘Like this recent proposal to make it 100 hours of learning. You could do
1,000 hours of learning, but it makes no difference. It’s not going to
change the outcome of the test. It won’t change unless they want to.’
[M, 17, Delayer]
Why should these young people, who have not yet got behind the wheel, be the ones
who place more emphasis on these aspects of good driving? We should note that one
possible reason, which cannot be discounted by this research, is that it is because
they are the kind of people who are more concerned about activity and more aware
of the shared space in which driving takes place that they have chosen to delay
driving. Another explanation, however, may lie in the fact that ‘delayers’ are more
likely than younger pre-drivers to have been driven by their peers who have already
learned to drive. For the younger groups, it was striking just how limited a pool of
drivers they had to draw on in thinking about good driving:
28
‘I get in the car with my dad most. No-one else in the family drives much.’
[F, 13]
Question: ‘Is your dad better than other people?’
‘I never really get into the car with anyone else.’ [M, 15]
By contrast, ‘delayers’ (and some learners) were much more likely to describe
experiences of being driven by their peers:
‘Most of the lads at my college are bad drivers. They just want to go fast.
This one guy turned his car over and still doesn’t care. I went in one car
for five minutes with someone quite good – but I wouldn’t trust him.
They’re just like: ‘‘I can drive now, let’s go as fast as I can and see if I can
control it at high speed’’. They’re rubbish.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
‘Harry, my mate [is a good driver]. He’s really slow, not very bright, but I
know I’m safe because he’s so involved with the driving. He’s really
patient about things, so you can’t really talk to him. He’s just thinking
about the road. It’s all about attitude. I’ve got idiot friends who try to
impress with messing around, overtaking on hills and stuff. But I’d rather
be in his car.’ [M, 18, Delayer]
‘I had a friend – on the day of the test, she crashed. A couple of months
later – I felt unsafe driving with her. She didn’t have control. I was
worried, but she didn’t seem concerned about it. She was singing along to
the music, she wasn’t actually in the car. Going round corners like you
were all over the place. She was dancing as well.’ [M, 17, Learner]
Driving with a friend whose projected confidence is so clearly at odds with their
actual capability may be exactly the kind of experience that will disrupt the cosy
social space within the car and prompt a young person to look outside the car. As we
shall see in Section 4, it is exactly this kind of ‘shaking’ experience which young
people, parents and ADIs all feel is needed to change attitudes to driving.
The idea that it is the disruption of the social space within the car – and in particular
the ‘safe’ relationship between parent and child – that drives a change in perspective
is consistent with the evidence from the current research, but it cannot by any means
be said to be proven. We recognise that further research is needed in this area. In
particular, a longitudinal study which enabled comparisons of individuals’
perceptions of driving at key moments in their learning trajectory would be
invaluable in shedding more light on when, why and how young people’s
understanding of good driving develops. We believe that our qualitative research
with pre-drivers and learners, in conjunction with our previous research with young
drivers, could provide a solid conceptual basis for quantitative studies in this area.
29
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
In the meantime, the findings from this research throw an interesting new light on
one of the key themes from our previous research with young drivers: their recurring
complaint that the social activity of driving is governed by ‘unwritten rules’ which
formal learning and testing simply do not address. The current research suggests
that the problem may lie not only in the learning but also in the learners. If young
people only begin to fully experience the social aspects of driving when they drive
on their own, i.e. after they have passed the test, then it is only at this point that they
will realise what it is they needed to have learned previously. Prior to this
realisation, they may not appreciate the importance of the information they are
given – for instance, the many ‘unwritten rules’ that are in fact written down in the
Highway Code.
Put simply, the oft-repeated adage that ‘you only start learning when you’ve passed
the test’ may conceal a deeper truth: that young people are only receptive to
learning things when they have passed the test.
2.4
Driving temptations
Good driving is not just about what you do, it is also about what you do not do –
and participants’ responses suggested that this is especially the case during the early
stages of driving, when young drivers might be particularly susceptible to two types
of temptation: peer pressure and adrenaline. These are discussed in the sub-sections
that follow.
2.4.1 Peer pressure
Peer pressure was a major theme in the discussions with young pre-drivers and
learners – although, predictably, the majority felt it was something that they
themselves would be able to resist:
‘You get bad influences from friends. My friend, when she’s with the
influence of one of her friends, she gets a bit stupid, because she wants to
fit in with the group, because they’ll think she’s a wuss.’ [F, 16]
Question: ‘Why do people do stupid things when they know what might
happen?’
‘Because they think they’re cool. They think they’re clever.’ [M, 15]
‘And you’ve seen the people: they’ve got their fast cars like and they
aren’t going to plod past at 30 mph if there’s people looking, are they?
They’re going to slam their car if they see someone looking and they get
naı̈ve. Young people are naı̈ve: they think they’re rally drivers as soon as
they get in the car.’ [M, 15]
‘Half of it is peer pressure as well, because with some people’s mates,
you’re totally not one of those people but you’re with your friends and
30
they all rob people or something like that. And they say, oh go on, take
that bag or nick that boy’s phone, just keep pushing and pushing. It’s the
same sort of thing with driving. So you’ve got your mate sitting next to
you and he’s like, oh, come on, speed up a little. And you speed up and
end up killing yourself or killing somebody.’ [M, 16]
‘People in the car with you want you to go fast because they don’t care.
It’s not their car. And they want you to go fast . . . They’re like, go on, go
on, do this mate, do that.’ [M, 15]
‘That’s why people go faster, to impress mates. They might not be
impressed, but people still do it.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘It’s the opposite.’ [M, 18, Delayer]
‘It’s bravado. Attention. They’re driving thinking: I can do it, I’ve got a
car.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘Afterwards, your mates think you’re an idiot.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
‘[Describing a character] He thinks he’s the big man and the top dog. He
gets out of his face and drunk. He comes from a nice family but in a bad
area. He wants to be a rebel and do things that his family don’t. He goes
round with his mates in their cars, they’re proper boy-racers round this
little estate. He loves it, and he wants to do it as well. He wants to be like
his mates, because he’s influenced by them. He’s trying to be the same.’
[M, 14]
‘Everyone shows off, with all due respect. It’s just in which way you do it.
Everyone gets excited and shows their mates.’ [F, 16]
Some parents also expressed concerns about whether their children would succumb
to peer pressure – although we cannot of course rule out the possibility that, in some
instances, blaming peers may simply be a strategy for a parent to avoid directly
acknowledging the culpability of their own children’s behaviour:
Question: ‘Have you any concerns about your child starting to drive?’
‘Easily led.’
Question: ‘Easily led, by mates?’
‘Mates, as soon as he passes say ‘‘Oh, come on, do this, X, do that, X’’,
and X will do it.’ [Father of M, 16]
‘This young lad [friend of son], he is a lovely lad, and he’s had a lot of
family problems, and he’s got up and he’s worked so many hours, he’s the
hardest working young man, and he’s bought this little banger, what I
would say. He’d insured it through his dad, and he’d crashed his car, and
his car’s a write off. But that wouldn’t have happened if they all hadn’t
been with him in the back, it was just one of those scenarios and he’s
31
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
really learnt his lesson, but it’s a hard lesson to learn.’ [Mother of M, 17,
Learner]
Given the amount of importance attached to peer pressure, it is important to note
that the direction of influence all seems to be one way – to make driving worse, not
better. A number of the young people we met told us that they had tried to influence
positively the driving of friends – for example by telling them to drive more slowly
– but that their requests had been ignored. This is rather puzzling: if the only thing
that is influencing behaviour is the fact that a peer is applying pressure, then that
pressure ought to work equally either way. So what might be going on?
The answer lies in part in the analysis offered previously in Section 2.2. If a good
driver is someone who communicates confidence and superiority to his or her
passengers, then a young driver may feel strongly incentivised to communicate these
same things to peers. Consciousness of the kind of image one projects as a driver is
apparent in conversations such as the following about ADIs:
‘I don’t like his [an ADI’s] style. He looks like a bit of a tool when he
drives.’ [M, 17, Learner]
‘I know what you mean. They don’t move their necks. They’re nervous.’
[M, 20, Learner]
‘They tell you not to cross your arms. It’s the steering. My instructor
drives differently when he drives home. He’s an idiot I think.’ [M, 18,
Learner]
The idea that ‘peer pressure’ is actually driven by a desire to project a particular
image of oneself as a driver fits well with the suggestion, made in our earlier
research (Christmas , 2007), that the overconfidence of young drivers is not a
cognitive error but a purposeful act.
The obvious problem with this line of argument, however, is that – as we saw in
Section 2.2 – a good driver is also someone who communicates concern to his or
her passengers. A number of the young people we spoke to criticised those who
persist in driving dangerously even when requested not to:
‘He’s [friend K] on my estate where I live and all the boys are like 18 now
and they’ve all just passed their tests. And they’ve all got cars. And at
night I just hear them screeching around and around, and K doesn’t bother.
He just leaves his car at home and he waits 10 minutes before he goes,
does everything, has everyone got their seat belts on? And yeah. And like
every traffic light he’ll make sure you’ve got your seat belt on and if you
haven’t, it’s like: get out . . . I’ve been in this boy called ___’s car once and
like he’s really dangerous. You know the seat belts. If you pull back the
seat they pull down and there’s a bit for your seat belt to go in. And he
32
doesn’t check or anything. He just drives around. But K makes sure that
you’ve got your seat belt on.’ [F, 15]
In situations in which the passengers in a car are egging the driver on, of course,
then the potential restraining influence of the desire to project concern is removed:
peer pressure, on this account, is actually the absence of a pressure to stay safe.
However the question remains: why do attempts by peers to influence driving
positively seem to have so little effect on some young drivers?
The explanation almost certainly rests in mindset differences between young people,
which lead them to place different emphases on the three elements of the good
driver image presented in Section 2.2 (concern, confidence and superiority). For
some young drivers, concern for passengers is paramount, and confidence and
superiority are seen as unimportant or even slightly ridiculous:
Question: ‘What makes a bad driver?’
‘Show-offs. Like my friend’s dad, jumping lanes. ‘‘You better not do this
in the test.’’’ [F, 18, Learner]
For others, it is the dimension of concern for passengers that is largely lacking. It is
worth noting, in this respect, that participants in this research identified some
obvious aspirational images of confident, superior drivers in popular culture – but
none of concerned drivers:
‘The same with young drivers at 17, just passed, and they watch something
like Too Fast, Too Furious or Top Gear or something like that, and they
see these new fast cars going 120 mph down the road and nearly having a
motor crash. And they think: yeah, I want to do that, I want to be like that,
and they end up crashing.’ [M, 16]
‘Top Gear just makes you want to jump in a Ferrari and go.’ [M, 19,
Learner]
Before leaving the topic of peer pressure, it is worth noting that as well as
identifying with or rejecting images of good drivers that exist in popular culture,
young drivers must also wrestle with popular conceptions of young drivers – or
indeed of young people in general. The fact that these popular conceptions, thanks
to their statistical basis, leads to higher insurance premiums increases the desire of
some young people to actively prove those conceptions wrong. The desire to ‘prove
adults wrong’ might prove an interesting starting point for efforts to influence the
driving behaviour of some young people:
‘There’s too many people crashing and giving the youngsters a bad name,
which is why it’s . . .’ [M, 15]
‘Yeah, but then again everyone’s got a bad name. I walk down the street
33
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
sometimes and I get old people holding their bags like I’m going to rob
them. Everyone treats young people as if they’re all the same, so they see
someone and because of what he talks like, they think he’s someone that’s
going to rob everyone, which he’s not. I mean, I’ve been here five years
now, and never have I ever robbed anyone, do you know what I mean?’
[M, 16]
‘Usually when younger people have passed, they go around like boy
racers. They drive like maniacs. But I won’t.’ [M, 15]
2.4.2 Adrenaline
Just as some people like roller coasters, so some people get a thrill from driving fast:
‘You know like when you go on a roller coaster and it goes really fast, and
you want to do it again, it’s like when you’re in a car that’s really fast and
there’s no cars on the road and you go really fast, you keep wanting to do
it again because you get really excited.’ [F, 15]
The two experiences are, of course, far from identical:
‘I like roller coasters and doing that stuff but the thing is, you’re always
thinking it’s a roller coaster; they’re 100% safe . . . But a car, you can lose
control.’ [F, 16]
But for young passengers, feeling safe with a driver who projects concern,
superiority and confidence, the experience can be experienced in quite similar ways:
‘It feels great, because he [my uncle] goes fast. I don’t get scared – but it’s
very fast though.’
Question: ‘How does that make you feel?’
‘That I wouldn’t like to be in a crash. I don’t think I’m going to be in a
crash. But I wouldn’t like to be in it.’ [M, 13]
‘I have a thing about fast cars . . . My boyfriend has a twin turbo – get an
adrenaline rush, a thrill from the speed. I’ve seen him do 180 when we
were out.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘I don’t know why I chose my dad first. It can be quite fun, an aggressive
driver. It’s just like the adrenaline of when you go fast . . . I sort of
encourage my dad. I tell him to go for it. If I was driving, I wouldn’t do it.
The car he’s got and the car I would have are different. I’ll have a little
thing.’ [M, 16]
34
As the last quotation indicates, those who enjoy speed may recognise that it will not
be appropriate for them to drive too fast when they start driving – even if it is (as in
this instance) only on the grounds that it is the car, and not the competence levels,
that is different. For some of those we met, especially in the younger-age groups,
driving fast was the thing that they most looked forward to about passing the test:
‘I’m looking forward to the different cars that I can drive – fast ones.
Favourite car: Porsche.’ [M, 13]
‘I’d like to drive places. Just like to drive. I’d like to be able to drive fast.
Just being able to go wherever you want, on the motorway and stuff.’
[M, 13]
‘I can’t wait to start. I just want to go fast.’ [M, 13]
Even these young people, however, tended to recognise a tension between their wish
and safety:
Question: ‘How do you know he [mate] is good?’
‘The speed he drives. He’s fast on the roads. In the car I feel safe even
though he’s quite fast. I like being in the car more with him than my mum,
because she’s like too slow.’
Question: ‘Are they as safe as each other?’
‘He’s not really safe, but I quite like the way he drives because it’s faster
and gets you there quicker. My mum’s safer.’
Question: ‘Do you worry about the risks?’
‘No.’
Question: ‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know.’
Question: ‘Is there a chance he’ll crash when you’re in the car?’
‘Yes.’
Question: ‘Would you like to drive like [mate]?’
‘A bit. I’d like speed from [mate] and safety from mum.’ [M, 15]
The challenge for these young drivers is that driving slowly can get boring:
‘My Grandma’s a good driver because she’s slow and careful. Really slow.
She makes sure she keeps under the speed limit.’
Question: ‘How do you know?’
‘Because she tells me. She’s like, I don’t know . . . always looking round at
other cars and stuff.’
Question: ‘How do you feel in the car with her?’
‘Bored. Because she’s too slow.’ [M, 13]
35
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
This is important. It is too easy to characterise adrenaline as some kind of potent
narcotic: the expression ‘thrill-seeking’, for instance, suggests an individual actively
seeking out new and more exciting experiences. This may be true for some young
drivers, but the accounts offered by participants in this research suggest something
altogether more mundane – risk-taking as a way of breaking up the boredom of
staying within one’s limits:
‘A month ago, we [speaker and a friend] went to Tesco and he drove over
the hedge. Not cos it was too fast. It’s just stupid, simple mistakes. I don’t
know why. He wrote the first car off. It was carelessness. He said before he
passed ‘‘I’ll go by the law’’, but the freedom took over and he doesn’t.’
[M, 18, Delayer]
Question: ‘Will you be tempted then?’
‘Definitely. I’ll definitely put my foot down.’ [M, 18, Delayer]
‘At times I’ll be pretty good, then I’ll have moments of madness when I’ll
put my foot down. For the first couple of months I think I’ll just get bored
of toddling along, put my foot down for a couple of hundred metres. But
I’ll obviously grow out of that. I can see myself just being stupid – though
I’m not going to drive round all the time with my foot to the floor. I can
see myself just doing it and getting caught out a couple of times by a few
speed cameras hidden away.’ [M, 18, Learner]
The kind of stupidity described by the last speaker is not that far away (structurally,
if not statistically) from the stupidity that leads millions of us to buy National
Lottery Tickets every week. In the latter case, a relatively small amount of certain
pain (the cost of a ticket) is accepted in exchange for the small chance of a very
large amount of pleasure. In driving, the small chance of a very large amount of pain
is accepted in exchange for a relatively small amount of certain pleasure.
2.5
Summary
In our earlier research with 17–25-year-old drivers (Christmas, 2007), we found that
participants defined good driving as the mastery of three different and parallel kinds
of activity, which we called the physical, social and emotional activities of driving.
In this research, we found that the definitions of good driving offered by young predrivers and learners included many references to the physical activity (especially
control and awareness) and emotional activity (especially staying calm). However,
on further probing, some of these definitions turned out to be problematic and, in
particular, many participants identified control with being able to drive fast.
Unlike the young drivers in the earlier research, there were almost no references to
the social activity of driving or to the need to be patient and considerate with other
drivers. On the other hand, the young pre-drivers and learners were far more likely
36
to mention consideration for passengers as a feature of good driving – for instance,
checking that passengers are wearing seat belts.
Pre-drivers’ and learners’ judgements that someone is a good driver are largely
based on the fact that one feels safe in the car with them. The evidence suggests that
this feeling of safety is not based on a cognitive assessment of the driver’s
behaviour, but is an affective reaction to messages projected by the driver through
their behaviour. Three types of message in particular seem to have a positive impact
on the feeling of safety:
•
•
•
confidence – I am able to deal with this situation;
concern – I am looking after you (the passenger); and
superiority – I am better than other drivers.
Analysis of these messages reveals some potential sources for patterns identified in
our previous research. The reliance of young drivers on confidence as a measure of
ability and the ‘talent’ model appear to develop from the way in which confidence
messages create a feeling of safety. Also, the projection of superiority may explain
why young drivers are broadly forgiving of a tendency to aggression in their own
behaviour.
The context for all of this is the ‘double insulation’ of young passengers, who are
cut off from other drivers not just by the ‘bubble’ of the car but also by the fact that
someone else is driving. Where that other person draws the passengers’ attention to
other drivers, it is as complex (and annoying) physical obstacles, not as people
sharing a common space. This helps to explain why the social activity of driving is
largely absent from the accounts of good driving offered by pre-drivers and learners.
Further research would be valuable to establish exactly how and when the social
activity of driving rises to prominence in the mind of the young pre-driver/learner/
driver. However, this research strongly suggests that this depends on the disruption
of the social space within the car, and, in particular, the ‘safe’ relationship between
parent and child. The presence of an ADI in the car helps to preserve this social
space – making the critical breakpoint the moment after the test when a young
person first drives on their own.
This account may also help to explain why ‘delayers’ (young people who delay
starting to learn to drive) are more likely to mention the social activity of driving.
This group are more likely to have been driven by their peers, and the experience of
being driven by a very confident but clearly incompetent peer may disrupt the
critical link between projected confidence and feeling safe.
The importance of the moment one drives on one’s own also sheds new light on the
finding from our previous research that young drivers typically believe that the
37
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
social activity of driving is not covered by the formal learning process, and that one
only starts learning to drive after passing. It may be that many young people are
only receptive to learning about the social activity of driving after they have driven
on their own, i.e. after they have passed.
Participants in this research were clear that good driving is not just about what you
do, but also about what you do not do. In particular, it is important to resist two
types of ‘temptation’ when one starts driving. The first of these is peer pressure.
Strikingly, peer pressure seems to work only one way – to make driving worse, not
better – with a number of young people telling us that their efforts to make friends
drive more safely did not work. A potential mindset difference is apparent here, with
some young drivers seeking to project messages of confidence and superiority (so
ignoring requests to drive more safely), and others seeking to project messages of
concern for passengers (so taking heed of them).
The second temptation is adrenaline – especially for those young drivers who have
been driven fast by a driver who nevertheless projects confidence and makes them
feel safe. However, this kind of behaviour is not necessarily ‘thrill-seeking’ in the
full sense of the term. Instead, a number of participants described putting one’s foot
down from time to time as a kind of boredom alleviation.
38
3
GOOD LEARNERS
The period between starting (formally) to learn to drive and passing the test is,
uncontroversially, a critical one in the development of driving ability. For many
young people, this may be the only significant formal input they receive on their
capabilities and attitudes as a driver:
‘Well I suppose as soon as you’ve passed your test, you’ve passed your
test – you are legal aren’t you, so off you go. It’s wrong really.’ [Mother of
M, 14]
The attitude of a young person during that period is therefore a critical variable in
their future behaviour as a driver. In this section, we consider the question: what
makes a good learner? In particular, we explore two critical dimensions in the
attitudes of learners which the evidence shows have a crucial impact:
•
•
3.1
how concerned the learner is about their readiness to pass the test; and
how impatient the learner is to pass the test.
Concern about readiness to pass
From the perspective of advanced driving instructors (ADIs), the best learners are –
perhaps unsurprisingly – those who are willing to accept criticism:
‘A readiness to listen, first and foremost, and a readiness to not curse their
own mistakes, but to learn from their mistakes. To accept, and some
people do find it hard to accept, that you do make mistakes when you’re
learning. I tend to find I’m more tolerant, more accepting of mistakes,
than my pupils are.’ [ADI]
Some learners also recognise the importance of this willingness to listen:
‘You’ve got to show you’re willing to learn and accept criticism.’ [F, 16]
The testimony of ADIs, however, shows that some learners come to lessons with a
very different attitude:
‘I had a guy last year and I picked him up and he’d had 36 lessons
previously, which is a reasonable amount of lessons, with a large driving
school . . . So he came to me and he basically sort of said, I need to pass
my test, which sort of set alarm bells ringing but I said, right, okay, fine,
now I need to assess you. I need to see how your driving is so that I can
see where we need to go . . . So he’s got in the car, immediately just took
off without looking round, and first of all when it came to it he did that,
39
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
right, and I thought, right, okay. Pulled him up immediately, stopped,
pulled over. And I said, did your instructor teach you to drive like that?
No, he didn’t. Right, so where did this come from then? Oh, I’ve been
driving my mates. No, not good. So then what we’ve got to do is unravel
what he thinks he’s learnt and basically he hasn’t learnt anything. All
they’ve done is let him drive. So, firstly it’s his attitude, because he thinks
he knows how to drive already. He knows how to move the vehicle, he
doesn’t know how to drive.’ [ADI]
The link made in this last quotation between a know-it-all attitude and previous
experience of driving with mates was echoed by other ADIs and parents:
‘He looks like someone that’s driven a car before, just with his mates and
whatever, ‘‘oh, I’ve done a bit, I can drive’’. You get no end of people . . .
how many people ring up and say to you, ‘‘oh, yes, I can drive, I just want
to cut the lessons and take my test’’. And they get in the car and they’re
crap.’ [ADI]
Question: ‘You said that you try [to talk about driving in the car] with your
son, and that he won’t have it. Why is that?’
‘I think it’s because the majority of his friends have already passed, and
they all know best, and he goes out with them in their cars . . . He thinks
he knows better.’ [Mother of M, 19, Learner]
So what factors contribute to a learner’s willingness to listen? One of the key
dimensions of difference is the size and significance of the gap they see between
their current level of ability and the level of ability required in order to be a good
driver, and their resulting level of concern that the learner feels about their
readiness to pass.
Young people see this gap as smaller or larger depending on where they place its
two ends. At one end of the gap, young people have differing perspectives on the
seriousness of the activity of driving. A few young people take it seriously because
they are clear about the scale of consequences attached to bad driving:
‘I’m nervous about being in control. Other people are affected.’ [F, 14]
‘There aren’t many things I do at the moment that could put people’s lives
at risk.’ [F, 14]
Although this point of view was more common among the parents who participated
in our research:
‘I’d worry myself sick, to be fair, and I will do when he starts driving –
you are just replacing one thing with another, aren’t you? Absolutely
worried sick when he starts driving, even though he’s a sensible child.
40
Even when he goes on his bike I worry. Basically you are sticking him in a
lethal weapon and I will be worried sick.’ [Mother of M, 13]
Other young people treat driving seriously because they see passing the test as an
achievement of which they can be proud:
‘She [character created in workshop] can’t wait until she passes her
driving test. She’s proud that she will pass, proud of driving.’ [F, 13]
‘The main thing [I am looking forward to] is to see how happy she’s going
to be about the fact she’s achieved something. Because, obviously, it’s a lot
harder now to pass your driving test and there’s quite a lot of pressure on
them I think, when they’re going through it. And I think that when she
does finally do it, it will be enough to see that she has achieved.’ [Mother
of F, 16]
Other young people take a much less serious view on driving:
‘[Sometimes you think] this person’s going to listen to what I’m going to
say to them, and take it in, whereas other people come out and you can
sometimes think: they’re only here to get a licence as soon as they can so
they can start larking about in a car.’ [ADI]
In particular, this lack of seriousness may attach itself to the driving test which, as
was shown in our previous research, suffers from a generally low level of credibility
among young people:
‘I’ve had one test. It went wrong, just a stupid mistake. It’s just getting all
the silly things right for me at the moment. It was a lack of concentration
and things really on my test. My mind just wanders. I see someone
walking down the road . . .’ [M, 19, Learner]
‘The difference with teaching [a guy I have been teaching] is that he is:
‘‘I’ve got my licence now, it is wonderful’’. When he finished I said,
‘‘good, you made it, you got 14 points, and you need 15 to fail. You got
14. Do you realise that you just made it?’’ ‘‘But I can drive, it doesn’t
matter how many points I got. The main thing is, I’ve got my licence and I
can drive.’’ I said, ‘‘But you don’t know all the rules so be careful’’. ‘‘It
doesn’t matter, I’m on the road, I can do what I want now. All these rules
you’re telling me about, spinning the wheel, holding the wheel one way,
change it, doesn’t matter, you don’t have to drive like that, because you’re
an instructor who is telling me to do that but really, no. Once I can control
a car I don’t have to do any of that any more, and there’s nobody to tell me
that I can’t, because I have a licence.’’’ [ADI]
41
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
At the other end of the gap, young people feel nervous about their own capability to
learn to drive. A number of the younger pre-drivers in particular described this
feeling of nervousness in talking about the characters they had created in
workshops:
‘She’s not looking forward to learning. She wants to drive, but she’s not
sure she’ll be able to because she’s lost all her confidence.’ [M, 13]
‘His mum died in a car crash three years ago. His dad doesn’t care if he
gets into trouble. He’s looking forward, but nervous about driving because
of what happened.’ [M, 13]
‘She’s nervous about driving because she’s seen people crash and she
doesn’t want to crash.’ [M, 13]
‘She’s scared about learning, doesn’t think she’ll be able to do it very
easily. Because of like the way that her friends drive and stuff. And her
mum. Her mum doesn’t like driving very much, she’s anxious.’ [M, 16]
‘She’s excited about driving herself, but she’s quite small. She feels she
might not be able to reach the pedals.’ [F, 14]
As we saw in Section 2.3, however, this nervousness can rapidly fade when young
people experience the first flush of being able to master steering and gears:
‘I’ll be safe but confident. Because I’ve had a go in cars before and that. I
feel like I know what I’m doing. I don’t, but I feel like I will.’ [F, 16]
It may be further weakened by versions of what we described in our previous
research (Christmas, 2007) as the talent model (a belief that driving ability is (at
least in part) a matter of natural talent, rather than something that needs to be
developed through experience):
‘If you’re a natural, you can drive straightaway.’ [M, 14]
‘He’s very confident because he thinks driving’s like easy.’ [M, 13]
Young people vary in their level of concern about their readiness to pass, and this
has a clear impact on their willingness to listen and invest in the learning process.
But this is not the only important dimension of difference between young people
indicated by the evidence from this research. Young people also vary in their level of
impatience to pass.
42
3.2
Impatience to pass
The moment of passing the test is a critical point in the life of a young person,
bringing with it significant new freedoms: freedom from reliance on other people
and other modes of transport, and the inconvenience and cost they entail:
‘Be able to go where I want to, without having to ask parents.’ [M, 13]
‘Not having to ask my parents to take me places and wait for them to
finish what they’re doing.’ [F, 14]
‘No more cycling when I pass.’ [M, 15]
‘Not having to get the bus. It’s quite expensive to get the bus into town.’
[F, 14]
‘The thing that I’m looking forward to the most is not getting on the bus.
The people on the bus, it’s full of . . . stinks. The buses stink. If you’re
going in rush hour and you’re coming back from work then it stinks, and
there’s a stench. Loads of school kids. I hate buses.’ [M, 16]
‘When I pass, it will save me a lot of money in taxis, buses and stuff,
getting to work.’ [M, 19, Learner]
Freedom to do more things with friends:
‘Get as many of my mates in my car and go out somewhere. I don’t know.
Better than the park.’ [M, 15]
‘Driving means you can take your friends out on a Friday night to Bristol.
I don’t go out there at the moment.’ [M, 15]
‘When I drive, I’m going to have more time to spend with my friends, and
by myself as well. When you’re bored at home, you can’t exactly go out
for a walk when it’s raining.’ [F, 15]
‘When I pass my test, I’ll probably spend a lot of time in it with my
friends. You can go further. You’re not limited. You can go on holiday.’
[F, 16]
Also, freedom to go to new places and do new things:
‘Add variety to what you can do. Better opportunities. See more things
which you can’t see around here.’ [M, 18, Learner]
43
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘Having the freedom of getting around, going where you want to, football
matches and stuff.’ [M, 15]
‘It will be really useful because when you’re 18 you can drive to university
and commute to different places in the UK.’ [F, 13]
‘I want a car cos I want to go round the world. I’ve heard of people doing
it. I just want to see what it’s like.’ [M, 13]
For many young people, driving also marks a critical point of transition into the
adult world:
‘[When she started] she felt nervous but really excited about driving: she
could help out mum and dad by driving.’ [F, 13]
‘I’ll be excited. When you start to learn, you’re getting older. It’s one of
them things you’re allowed to do at a certain age.’ [F, 14]
‘I think driving gives you more responsibility. That’s a good thing. Then
more people can trust you.’ [M, 15]
This ‘right of passage’ quality of passing the test was something that parents and
ADIs also commented on:
‘It’s quite a major thing isn’t it? It’s like getting married, and moving into
your first home and stuff like that. Learning how to drive is a very big
thing, it’s a major part of your life, isn’t it?’ [ADI]
‘It seems to be your first real achievement as an adult. There’s a lot of
pressure on you at that age. It’s something you know you’ve got to do to
give you the freedom to get jobs, to travel, to whatever. When you pass,
it’s an amazing feeling. It’s one of the best things in the world, isn’t it? At
the time, it’s just great.’ [Father of M, 16]
Given all this, it is not surprising that many of the young people we met were
impatient to pass the test and to start driving. This sense of impatience can, for some
young people, be strengthened by the sense that driving – especially driving fast –
will be fun (see Section 2.4.2 for some other examples of this) or by a desire to keep
up with peers who have already passed:
‘. . . I keep a very tight rein on pupils who, if they’re coming into this
because I want to drive, because all my mates drive. Because the first
question I ask of people when they get in is, why do you want to learn to
drive? And if that’s the answer that comes back, that does ring an alarm
bell, I think, rather as was being said. I don’t let people like this go too
44
fast, I don’t let people like this be reckless in my car, risking their life, my
life, and other people’s lives. My concern would be what happens after
they’ve finished.’ [ADI]
‘When they’re learning they do pick it up, they do ask the questions,
sometimes, but they are only young lads whose sole motivation in life, up
until that point, is to pass their driving test, basically, and nothing else.
They want to pass their driving test so they can cruise around town, they
can drive their girlfriends around and stuff like that, or get in the back of
the cars with their mates.’ [ADI]
Given that the number of lessons and tests taken to pass are commonly used by
young people as points of comparison, some parents noted that peer (or sibling)
comparison can also encourage a form of ‘competitive impatience’ to pass:
‘They take the mickey out of each other, like one of them failed the theory
twice, so they said, ‘‘oh, fancy failing that’’.’ [Father of M, 18, Learner]
‘I’ll do it in 10 lessons and that sort of thing; I’ll pass first time, etc.’
[Father of M, 19, Learner]
‘I don’t know whether it’s a boy thing, but he can’t wait to have his little
boy racer car and beating his brothers and making sure that he passes his
test before his brother is taking it . . . all that sort of thing.’ [Mother of M,
17, Learner]
The cost and expense of lessons can have a similar impact, especially on those
whose parents are not paying for lessons:
‘If lessons were cheaper, more people would take more lessons.’ [M, 18,
Learner]
‘Lessons are quite expensive. You can’t afford to have loads in a week. If
you’re only working part-time, half your wages are gone.’ [F, 17, Learner]
‘If you go to your lower-class families, obviously money is a problem, and
they want to get there as soon as possible. [In richer families] the parents
often even pay. You get a cheque for your 10 hours with mum and dad’s
name on it, and they come out with it in their pocket, whereas again, not
your lower class . . . they pay weekly, cash, because they’re all working and
they haven’t got the backing of the family for learning to drive.’ [ADI]
Through a combination of their differing levels of motivation for the outcomes of
passing and differing degrees of tolerance for the process of learning, young people
vary in their level of impatience to pass. Some young people, it is worth noting,
45
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
show very little impatience at all – so little impatience, indeed, that they do not even
start driving.
3.3
A simple segmentation of learners
In this section we have described two key dimensions of difference between young
learners that, between them, determine the way in which those young learners will
engage with the pre-test learning process. Combining these dimensions, we can
create a simple grid onto which young learners can be plotted. Figure 3.1 illustrates
this simple grid with some quotations taken from our research.
Of all the different permutations of learner, it is – not surprisingly – those in the top
left-hand corner of this grid whom ADIs most dread:
‘He wants to drive because everybody drives. It’s great, it’s fun on the
road, it’s like the stunt man who decides, everybody is a stunt man, why
can’t I be a stunt man, I want to do it, I can do it.’ [ADI]
Figure 3.1: Grid showing segmentation of learners into the dimensions of impatience and
concern with regard to passing the driving
46
‘His attitude to driving, I would characterise as being, it’s great fun, it’s
great to have some power, the power of controlling a vehicle. It’s great to
have some independence, I don’t have to get a lift off my mum, I don’t
have to get the bus. But there isn’t really a deep seated awareness of just
how bloody dangerous driving is.’ [ADI]
A number of participants in ADI workshops commented that drivers such as these
can ‘play the system’, doing as they are told in lessons and in the test purely to
speed up the process of getting a licence:
‘You can see through the veil that they’re trying to put an act on, for the
test. Doesn’t matter what you try and tell them, you must do this to remain
safe, yeah, yeah, and they’re just working to a format, to pass the test, and
you know full well that some of them, after they’ve passed the test are just
going to do whatever they like . . .. There’s no follow up after the test.
There’s no checks. They know that.’ [ADI]
‘So they’ll go by the book, they’ll learn everything by the book. You might
have to slow them down one day and say, why are you driving so fast all of
a sudden? Because they pick up bad habits from sitting in the passenger
seat of their mates’ cars and things like that, but you know they’re going to
be like their mates as soon as they pass their driving test . . . This lad, he’ll
learn quite quickly, he’ll get through his test. But you know that after he’s
passed his driving test he’s not going to feed the wheel, he’s not going to
do the push, pull thing.’ [ADI]
‘He will probably be really good to talk to, get through his test and then
like most young kids these days, will try and push their luck, and they’ve
got their licence. It’s human nature. There’s no magic way of stopping that
bad boy. They will all try and push the limit and they’ll push themselves
far enough that they will crash.’ [ADI]
A few of the young people noted similar patterns in the behaviour of their peers:
‘I know people that have been drivers from a young age, because they’ve
got experience in cars, they take lessons, drive normal in the exam – then
drive like idiots.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
3.4
Summary
The attitude of a young person during the period of formal learning is a critical
variable in their future behaviour as a driver. Two dimensions were identified which
determine how good a learner will be.
47
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
On the one hand, the level of concern a learner feels about their readiness to pass
will impact on their willingness to take criticism and listen. A young person’s
concern may be increased either because they have a higher estimation of the
potential consequences of bad driving or because they have a lower estimation of
their own current capability.
On the other hand, the level of impatience a learner feels to pass – and to be out on
the road driving – will influence the way in which they engage with the learning
process. Many (though not all) young people are impatient for the freedom that
driving is perceived to bring, with a much smaller number also being impatient for
the experience itself. Impatience can be increased by competition with peers or
siblings (to pass first, in fewer lessons, etc.) and by the practical costs (money, time)
of the learning process.
Taken together, these two dimensions define a simple grid onto which young
learners can be plotted. Learners with a very low level of concern and high level of
impatience provide the greatest cause for concern. Some of these may ‘play the
system’, doing as they are told in lessons and in the test purely to speed up the
process of getting a licence.
48
4
GOOD LEARNING
According to the participants in this research, learning to drive has two basic
elements to it. On the one hand, learning to drive is about mastering the physical,
emotional and social activities of driving – although, as we have seen in Section 2.1,
many pre-drivers and learners place little, if any, emphasis on the last of these. On
the other hand, it is about getting the right attitude – both to driving (so that one can
resist the temptations described in Section 2.4) and to learning (as discussed in
Section 3). The sections that follow explore these two aspects of learning in more
detail and, in particular, the critical role played by experience in each.
4.1
Mastering the activity of driving
There was widespread agreement among the young people taking part in this
research that experience is critical to mastering the activity of driving – with a
number identifying off-road experience as an important first step in learning to
drive, and others suggesting modular approaches which allowed the learner to
increase the level of driving challenges in stages:
‘Another thing that would be good is practising on private land. Because
on private land you can’t get into trouble for anything you do, and it’s
open space, so you can’t crash into things.’ [M, 15]
‘Different tests for motorways and certain other places, so you don’t have
to take the whole test again. You would have to take all the modules before
driving, but then you could do the ones you’re good at first.’ [F, 20,
Learner; F, 17, Learner (working in a pair)]
A number of participants felt that relevant experience could include watching other
people driving:
‘I think it would be good to get in the car while watching other drivers,
and like see everything there. When you’re like normally in the car you
don’t normally focus on the driver. This way you’d get a first-hand view.’
[M, 15]
Question: ‘What sort of things could help you learn?’
‘Watching their mates driving.’ [F, 15]
‘Watching other drivers.’ [M, 16]
‘And more experienced drivers like your parents.’ [M, 15]
A few young people claimed that they actually used the regular opportunities they
had to do this when sitting in the passenger seat:
49
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘You know, when someone’s driving, you’re curious, just watching them,
so you watch the way their feet go, pushing down the pedals, and you
watch the clutch and you watch the gears. You watch what side they’re
observing. Everything I know I’ve picked up off him.’ [M, 16]
‘I watch my dad all the time. Even if you’re bored in the car it’s something
to do.’ [M, 16]
‘My mum makes me watch when to change gear and stuff. I’m learning
something from it though. It depends if I’m in the mood – it can be
irritating.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
In contrast to this general enthusiasm for experiential learning, a number of
participants were sceptical about the theory side of the test:
‘You could just read the Highway Code to try and show you’re a good
driver.’ [M, 13]
‘But you could have no confidence at all.’ [M, 13]
‘Nowadays it’s all about theory work rather than going out and driving.
Like you can know the Highway Code and not be a good driver. Someone
can drive well but if they’re not clever enough to pass the theory test,
surely it’s more important to have better safe drivers on the road than
people who can tell you about how to drive?’ [M, 14]
‘They can’t make the driving test any tougher! If they made it more
practical and relevant that would make sense!’ [M, 18, Learner; M, 20,
Learner (working in a pair)]
Some participants felt that learning about driving, including the theory test, could be
a popular option in schools:
‘I think people would find it – not exciting, but vaguely interesting,
because it’s like towards adulthood, vaguely older.’ [F, 14]
‘In school it would be one of the coolest things you could take.’ [F, 19,
Learner]
However, in some cases, at least, this seems to have been linked to a desire to get the
theory test out of the way as early as possible:
‘You should take your theory test in schools, so you’ve got more of an
open opportunity, and you can take it again after school.’ [M, 15; M, 16
(working in a pair)]
50
A number of young people expressed concern about whether people really get
enough experience before they take their tests:
‘My friend passed his test after eight or nine lessons, and he passed first
time. And I think it was three weeks after that he wrote his car off. He’s a
terrible driver and he passed. I think it’s basically luck on the day.’ [F, 16]
‘You get better after the test. You have more experience when you’ve been
driving for a while, so like you’re not going to be that good, even if you
concentrate.’ [F, 15]
This concern was echoed by parents and ADIs:
‘I think driving lessons should be made to last longer, not a quick fix in a
week, because you can’t learn to drive in a week, I don’t care what anyone
says. You might cross the Ts and dot the Is but you cannot drive the car in
a week. And it ought to be mandatory that driving takes a longer time, say
over a year to learn to drive and you have to have so many lessons in that
year. Now it’s going to come back to people can’t afford it but I think
insurance companies ought to contribute towards it, I really do.’ [Father of
F, 17, Learner]
‘Have a certain number of lessons like pilots. Some pass their test at six
lessons, which isn’t enough really, so if they had a set number of lessons
as standard, that might help.’ [Mother of M, 20, Learner]
‘Yes, you need a minimum of 30 hours to get a pilot’s licence.’ [Father of
F, 17, Learner]
‘I know in Germany you’re not allowed to learn with anybody other than a
qualified driver, and you must do at least 40 hours, classroom tuition.’
[ADI]
These concerns were often linked with the kinds of sceptical comment about the test
itself, which, in our previous research (Christmas, 2007), were common among
young drivers:
‘Sometimes you can pass a driving test without really understanding how
to drive the car. Some people can do eight or ten lessons, pass the driving
test, they are still not a good driver when they pass their driving tests. I
think people pass driving tests who are not good drivers.’ [Father of F, 13]
‘You can take someone who’s not very good at driving; you can go to a
test centre; you can drive them round all the roads that are used on the test
routes, which are quite easy to find, and you can get that person who
probably isn’t as good as you’d want him to be, to get through that test.
51
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
You can get them through that test. You can tell them what gear they need
to be in, where to look . . . in other words if someone can absorb the
information you can coach them into passing that test. That does not make
them a good driver.’ [ADI]
‘I teach my pupils to drive in the real world. I teach them how to pass a
test, but I teach them to drive for real. There’s a big difference, because
the test is outdated. It really is.’ [ADI]
‘But the great thing about it is that, with my pupils, it’s not just teaching to
be able to pass their test, but teaching them to drive. So at the end of it
they actually know what they’re doing, they know what the dangers on the
road are, they know how to drive, not to just pass the test, which is what
most of the people ask me for.’ [ADI]
Question: ‘Does passing your test make you a good driver, in your view?’
‘No, but driving experience does.’ [Mother of M, 19, Learner]
4.2
What role should parents play in helping children master
driving?
The young people, ADIs and parents in this research were in near universal
agreement that teaching people how to drive should be left to professional
instructors. Three types of argument were offered for this preference. The first was
that parents’ knowledge of driving is not up to scratch:
‘You need your driving instructor as well because they know exactly what
you need to pass.’ [M, 16]
‘If I chose my mum or my dad, I don’t think of them as good drivers. They
had their test so many years ago. They tell me to do things and that’s not
what I’ve been told. They’ve got the experience – but probably need to
brush up.’ [M, 17, Learner]
‘I’m not an instructor. I will probably show him the wrong way to be
honest.’ [Father of M, 16]
‘I wouldn’t presume to teach one of my children, because I learnt to drive
30-odd years ago, and I don’t know what the current methods of teaching
are.’ [Father of F, 17, Learner]
The nature of the relationship between parent and child was also an issue for a
number of participants, and formed the basis for a second type of argument. Young
52
people, on their side, questioned whether their parents would actually give them the
feedback they needed – or, if they did so, whether it would be given constructively:
‘You have honesty. So if it’s your family and friends they might not say
you did that wrong because they might feel scared of how you’re going to
react. They might feel out of place that they shouldn’t be telling you what
to do. So the driving instructor is going to say you’re doing that wrong.’
[F, 16]
‘The instructor shows you and tells you what you’ve done wrong and how
you can do it right. But with your parents, they say: ‘‘oh, no, you’re doing
it wrong, you’re doing it wrong!’’’ [F, 15]
‘[My brother] was scared, but his instructor was so good that when he took
him to the roundabout he told him everything around it. So he watched for
you. Whereas with your mum and dad all they would be scared of is you
crashing their car. So basically they love you too much to say that you’re
doing it wrong because they don’t want to make you upset.’ [M, 16]
‘I’m alright with my driving instructor. I know he’s got control as well and
talks me through everything. But my dad thinks I can do everything and
he thinks I should know things, like coming up to this roundabout and
lorry on the inside, whether I should stop. He’s been driving for a long
time, so he thinks I’ll know, he doesn’t think.’ [F, 17, Learner]
‘When I was 12 I had a few outings with my dad. It wasn’t good. We’re
both impatient. He tried to grab the steering wheel, and we were shouting
at each other. I hated it anyway!’ [F, 20, Learner]
Parents, for their part, questioned whether their children would actually take
feedback from them:
‘You get the arguments when you come back and they will accept it more
from a complete stranger.’ [Father of F, 15]
‘I think nowadays, the children are better off going with just an instructor
because it’s all crossed messages, isn’t it? Everyone drives differently and
if their instructor’s telling them one thing, and then if they’re going out
with their dad or mum, there would be a few punch ups as well. They take
it from a complete stranger as well. They take the criticism. If someone
was going to criticise them and say you’re not even safe to be out on the
road yet, or something, you’re going to get the strops and the huffs and
puffs. Where, if the instructor was sitting there and saying exactly the
same thing, they’d take that on board and they’d work that little bit harder.
53
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
Because they don’t like to be criticised at that age, do they?’ [Mother of
F, 16]
Finally, a third class of argument was based on the fact that instructors, unlike
parents, have cars with dual controls:
‘I don’t know how to cope with every situation at the moment, and my
instructor, he can take control really quickly.’ [F, 17, Learner]
‘Well, with my son, I intended to take him out and I didn’t because I just
didn’t think it was right. Again, they could be the best driver in the world,
you’ve got no dual controls or anything in the car, so if something pulls
out, they might just panic. So I think it’s best to just let them go out with
an instructor, you’re paying the money so they can teach them.’ [Father of
F, 15]
‘At the moment she’s not had many lessons so I don’t feel confident to sit
beside her . . . It’s just me not feeling that my reactions would be quick
enough if she got into a difficult situation, to pull the handbrake up.’
[Mother of F, 17, Learner]
‘It [driving with parents] should be stopped. What have they got to stop
somebody that’s coming out of a junction? A handbrake, which is not of
use. It needs to be stopped. It is lethal.’ [ADI]
Only the last of these third classes of argument is obviously an argument against
supervised practice. ADIs themselves were not in agreement about whether or not
supervised practice was a good idea:
‘What I tend to do is I encourage my pupils, if they can, to have private
lessons with their parents etc. . . . The reason I encourage that is the pupils
that I take to tests that have had private lessons are infinitely better,
because they’ve had a lot more experience and in their mind it’s not a
financial burden . . .’ [ADI]
‘I’m totally against the gentleman there, with the practice with other
people, because when you teach something you see what your daddy’s
doing, your mummy’s doing, why can’t I do it?’ [ADI]
Parents themselves took different lines on whether or not they wanted to get
involved in supervised practice:
‘I just give them experience. The more experience really, maybe learning
to drive, but I take them out as well on the road.’ [Father of F, 17, Learner]
54
‘I’d do the supervised practice, because my mum did it for me, and I
passed my test a lot quicker because she took me out.’ [Mother of M, 13]
‘I want nothing to do with it whatsoever. That’s what you pay a driving
instructor for, because I think you get into so many arguments and bad
habits. I don’t want anything to do with it.’ [Mother of M, 13]
‘It depends on . . . some kids don’t want their parents along. It all depends
on the individual child.’ [Father of F, 13]
The point was made by parents, ADIs and young people alike that better
communication between them could be important to making a success of supervised
practice – though comments were made that both parents and ADIs felt that it was
up to the other party to make more of an effort in this respect:
‘We also wanted to take some advice [from the instructor], and not just be
judgemental when [our children] were out with us, but to share the
responsibility – and with the new drivers themselves, and with the
professionals, because we felt it was easy for us to be out with them, and
to be picking up the bad points, when, in actual fact, we should be
communicating more and [having] ongoing communicat[ion] with the
professional driving instructor, and with the young driver themselves.’
[Mother of M, 19, Learner]
‘We go to parent’s evening for our children at school, it should be treated
the same, because this is important now, because they’re on the road, on
their own, so there should be the opportunity where parents or whoever’s
paying who’s interested in the child, should see the instructor at some
stage, or a progress report.’ [Mother of M, 19, Learner]
‘It’s just so nice sometimes when mum comes out to the door: ‘‘Oh, we
just want to have a look at you. And she’ll be all right with you, won’t she,
and you’ll bring her home in one piece’’, and whatever, and it’s just nice,
because then you feel that you could approach the parents as well. You
know, we’re not getting on very well or whatever, because of this, because
of that. I’ve set her some homework, or whatever. Could you just make
sure she’s got it ready for next week. But no-one wants to put any effort in,
do they? No-one puts any interest into it. They just want to pay the money
and you’ve got to do all the work. Just get me through the test.’ [ADI]
‘I think more communication between the instructors and the other people
that you learn to drive with. More joined up, sharing tips. At the moment
it’s a bit disjointed.’ [M, 17 Learner]
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
However, there is an additional challenge here. Frequently, parents are not only
acting as supports to the learning process: they are also paying clients. This can
produce a tension between the desire to ensure that young people get the right
amount of experience (analogous with a learner’s concern about readiness to pass
the test in Section 3.1) and the desire to ensure value for money (analogous with a
learner’s impatience to pass the test in Section 3.2). The fact that money changes
hands can lead to scepticism about the motives and/or capabilities of ADIs when the
learning process is felt to have gone on a little too long:
‘My instructor’s milked me for money, definitely.’ [F, 18, Learner]
‘They think you’re not teaching them right, or they’ve had enough lessons
now, they should be making more progress than they actually are, that sort
of thing.’ [ADI]
The lack of any independent measure of how well one is doing can add to the need
felt to take on this client role. Young people and their parents can lack confidence
about whether their ADIs judgement of their competence is actually trustworthy:
‘If there was a massive standardisation of the quality of driving instructors
then they could tell you when you’re ready.’ [M, 18, Learner; M, 20,
Learner (working in a pair)]
This can lead to an entirely different kind of conversation to the ones outlined
above:
‘We felt that he wasn’t pushing Sarah as well as he should be. He treats
everybody perhaps on the same level and not everybody’s on the same
level. Each pupil is different, and we felt that she could have taken her
lessons say before Christmas, because her manoeuvres were perfect and
everything, and I just don’t know what happened and I think his sort of not
being confident in her has rubbed off onto her a little bit.’ [Mother of F,
18, Learner]
‘Their parents probably took their tests 20 or 30 years ago, probably more
than that, they might have only taken six or seven lessons, or 10 lessons, to
pass their test, and they just can’t see why it takes 50, 60, 70, 100 lessons
to get to that standard.’ [ADI]
4.3
Experience and attitude
For the young pre-drivers and learners in this research, experience was seen not just
as playing a role in mastering the activity of driving but also as the critical step in
changing problematic attitudes. A number of young people talked about the need for
56
concrete and personal experiences if one was to have any real chance of changing
attitudes:
‘[Describing an idea for a simulator] You need punishments as well.
You’re driving but it’s not real, so if you crash it’s like Game Over. But if
you had electric shocks or something.’ [M, 15; M, 15 (working in a pair)]
‘Close encounters [make you a better driver]. Like say one day you come
across a roundabout, someone pulls out on you, in time you’ll be thinking
that you won’t be as naı̈ve and every time you come to a roundabout you’ll
be expecting the person to pull out.’ [M, 16]
A number of young people felt that direct contact with someone else who could talk
convincingly about such experiences might be sufficiently emotionally engaging to
influence people:
‘If someone had knocked someone over, people our age, it would be the
right time to do it, to come and talk about it. Only if they want to, but they
can stress how it’s ruined their life.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘Maybe talking to someone who’s lost someone and been through it. It
might put you off.’ [M, 18, Delayer]
School was also identified as a place where this sort of work on attitudes might
sensibly take place:
‘Most people are that eager to learn about cars anyway. Just about safety
and everything. It could be compulsory. [You’d need to] have like a model
car and stuff, to sit in it and know how to work stuff . . . You could learn if
people get angry with you, cut you up and that, how you react and stuff.’
[F, 14; F, 13 (working in a pair)]
‘You get stuff on drugs and alcohol at college, but we’re driving too, and
you never hear anything.’ [M, 18, Delayer]
‘We learn careers and citizenship, all about morals. You could be taught
something similar to that. You could learn the morals of driving. Moral
citizenship.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
Parents also thought that tactics such as those described above might have a chance
of success:
‘A good idea would be a support/action group run by, perhaps, exoffenders that have been involved in car crashes, like you do with drugs.
Most of the people who have been involved with those have been ex-
57
Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
druggies and they’re trying to get the kids off it. So if there was some kind
of group, similar to what they were saying, that can show crashes . . .
Because I think that if you hear it from someone who’s actually been
there, then they can actually tell them what it did to them emotionally. It
would ruin your life, I would imagine.’ [Father of F, 15]
‘I think really it would be a good idea to put him into a racing thing and
let him have an accident where he doesn’t really . . . he can find out what
the pain is. That might do him a bit more good. They could test him in one
of these cars. But that’s what happens when you have an accident; it hurts.’
[Mother of M, 20, Learner]
A number of parents stated that they themselves had made efforts to raise questions
about safety with their children, with varying degrees of success:
‘We just talk about . . . when you hear of instances, like, in the village
where we are there has been incidences in the past where youths have been
killed because they are racing through the village and they ploughed into a
lamppost so we would then have the conversation about, you know, it’s not
clever to drive like that. You don’t have to drive at speed to impress
people. You don’t have to be going through the village and see your mates
and think ‘‘right, I’ll put my foot down now and show them what I can
do’’, and then you end up wrapped around a lamppost. We try and drill
that into him, that it’s not all about speed. There is more to it than that.’
[Mother of M, 13]
‘I think I’ve talked about it because my eldest son is a nightmare and he’s
a real nightmare because a lot of his friends and people I know have had
nasty accidents, people of his age. My son thinks he’s the best driver since
sliced bread and nothing could ever go wrong. It is a worry and I have
witnessed him being absolutely awful. So, yes, we have had those
conversations several times.’ [Mother of M, 20, Learner]
‘My nephew passed last week, and he was driving my brother’s car, and he
was going mad about it . . . Really speeding. He only passed about two
weeks ago, so he was with his mum, and just going mad about it, and she
was shouting and screaming.’
Question: ‘And did he listen?’
‘Boys?’ [Mother of M, 16]
Parents also noted the importance of insurance and access to cars as levers with
which to influence children’s behaviour:
‘I took him out. I’ve got a 1.8 Cabriolet, and my car’s not ideal to give him
lessons, because it’s quite powerful, you can’t really see out of the back,
58
but he’s begged me and begged me. My husband’s car is a 2.2 GTi
something or other, and it’s like you said, he thinks he’s getting the fastest
rocket that’s going to get him to Macclesfield and back, and I said ‘‘No, it
will be a one-litre Corsa or something like that’’. ‘‘Oh, no, no, no.’’ . . .
The one thing we have decided is, he will pay for his own insurance . . . It
might make him think that bit more if he does have an accident, he will
have to pay even more, and I’m adamant that I’m not going to pay that for
him, and he’s not coming on our insurance either. I know I sound dead
hard and dead mean, but as an added [incentive], you know.’ [Mother of
M, 17, Learner]
‘For two years, after you pass your test, [there should be a law that] you
are only allowed to drive a one-litre engine, it would slow them down a
little bit and peer pressure would be less because everybody of their age
would have a one-litre Micra . . . It’s like a uniform at school. Nobody
queries it because everybody is in the same boat. If, after passing your
test, for two years, no matter what age you are, 40 or 50, you have a onelitre engine, the temptation wouldn’t be there . . . it’s like a uniform at
school. Nobody argues with it because they are all the same. So it would
be easier as a parent – you can say it’s the law.’ [Mother of M, 13]
Some parents also expressed the view that more support might be made available to
parents seeking to tackle these issues with their children – especially when children
actually become involved in dangerous driving:
‘There isn’t any support, is there, because you wouldn’t know where to go,
you wouldn’t know who to ask, so really I suppose it comes down to once
they’ve passed their test, that they do a group or something . . . You know,
how can I slow him down because I fear he’s going to crash and die, and
they should be able to sort of help more so because they’ve got the
modern . . . they’ve got them through the driving test, the DVLA, they’re
big on it, aren’t they, because all the driving instructors work for them and
everything. I mean I wouldn’t know where to go or who to ring if my . . .
which he might well do, my real son.’ [Mother of M, 13]
‘. . . I think if I was really concerned, if I thought that my son was out of
control and was driving erratically, I think ultimately I would shop him. If
I thought he was doing something that would not only harm himself but
harm others, the only people that could tell really would be the police, so
you’ve gone heavy handed with that. There is nothing in between.’
[Mother of M, 13]
‘. . . Everything’s got a sort of help line. Frank for drugs. You’ve got the
network of teachers if they’re in trouble for . . . well, you can go to your
teacher about anything.’ [Mother of M, 13]
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘You could go to your doctor for a lot of things as well, but with driving
there’s nowhere . . . you wouldn’t know . . . well, I don’t.’ [Mother of
M, 13]
‘And really you’re giving them a loaded weapon aren’t you? There is
nothing at all. There’s almost a helpline for absolutely everything you can
think of.’ [Mother of M, 13]
‘A couple of weeks ago, it’s a bit embarrassing, my daughter was knocking
about with some unruly people, and they were found to be smoking some
weed; my daughter wasn’t. Anyway, some of them were arrested, they
were only 14 and 15, but to cut a long story short, they sent C home and
said go straight home, it was half past seven in the evening, and the
policeman rang me up when C came home and said, can I come and see
you tomorrow? C had not been taking the drugs, but she was with this
gang, and they came round the next day and sat with her for half an hour,
and just talked to her like she was a proper person, and just spoke about
drugs, and how bad they were for you, and what they did to you etc., and
to this day now, C, she’s very, very defiant, but she’s not been near this
gang, and she seems to have a lot more respect for the police etc. And I
was thinking, why couldn’t the police do something like that, I know
mine’s sort of quite a unique situation, but with R [son], there were five
young men in that car that crashed because the driver was drinking, and
I’m sure some other friends have perhaps had a little bit too much to
drink, but the police just sort of sent them home. The young man was sent
to the police station, locked up, he walked home at four o’clock in the
morning on his own, and the young boy was sentenced six weeks after.
There’s been no counselling and R has even said, he felt when the police
came round to talk to C about the drugs, he said, now if the police would
have come round and had us all together, all five of them, to perhaps go
over and say, statistically do you know how many children under the age
of 20 have died? You need to use shock tactics I think with this age group
anyway that my son is, and I think if they’d been addressed after the
incident and perhaps, like you say, somewhere to go, because it definitely
did the trick for C and these people, and that’s the only thing I can think
of. The situation, it’s all been forgotten now, and nobody spoke to the
young lads, they just were interested in getting the driver obviously and
taking him away.’ [Mother of M, 17, Learner]
‘If you recognise that there will be some sort of problem like that
[attitudinal], then I would say, talk to the driving school and say ‘‘Look,
this is potentially going to be a problem, have you got an instructor who
could deal with that?’’’ [Father of F, 17, Learner]
‘There should be more driving schools where there is a selection of
instructors where you could find the right one, because there’s not many
60
places where you could go like that, they’re either independent or you
don’t get to see the instructors.’ [Mother of F, 18, Learner]
However, in some cases parents may not actually be aware (or may not choose to
acknowledge) that their child’s attitudes towards driving are a potential problem:
‘I knew my son was going to be a problem driver because he’s had that
attitude since he was 14. But then very good friends of mine whose son is
a year younger, they think he’s a little angel and he’d never do anything
wrong, would never go over the speed limit. But unfortunately he’s one of
the worst. So not all parents see it.’ [Mother of M, 20, Learner]
ADIs themselves cite the ability to identify the attitude of a young person early on
as a critical element of their competence, and adapt their teaching style to that
attitude:
‘It’s an instinct that you develop over a period of time. You can also tell
whether they’ve been driving illegally. Coming up to junctions, exceeding
the speed limits, no regard for anything or anyone, and you tame them.
There’s some people that I’ve thrown out of the car, and just refused point
blank to teach them, because you know at some point they’re going to run
into somebody, or knock somebody down, and you don’t want to be
responsible for that.’ [ADI]
‘If you’re picking somebody up that’s on that side, then you change the
way you teach them. You’ve got to adapt to them, to get them to adapt to
you, then when you’ve got them going, you start teaching as you normally
do.’ [ADI]
‘It’s just the way we read people and deal with it.’ [ADI]
For some ADIs, that adaptation of style can include trying to engineer experiences
which, while safe, are felt by the learner to be dangerous, precisely in order to bring
about shifts in learners’ attitudes:
‘You know within the limits of safety you can take it to, and if it is in
those limits, they can do it.’ [ADI]
‘You’ve got to push them a little bit, just to see how far they’re going to
go. The best lesson I’ve had this year is when it snowed. First lesson of the
morning. They put too much salt down this year. I always go out in the
snow. We go sliding, and it is the only place they’re going to learn it, on
the road, how far is it going to slide, which way is it going to go, how are
you going to straighten it up? You can’t do that on a road today, but when
it is snowing, great stuff.’ [ADI]
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘I’ve had a few situations where you’ve brought home what you’re trying
to say, like I remember immediately there was a guy who was pulling out
from a T junction, he was looking right and edging out over the give way
line. There was a car coming from the left which he hasn’t seen, because
he was only looking to the right, I leave it till the very last moment and
then slam on the brake much harder than I need to; and there was a car
coming which he hadn’t seen.’ [ADI]
‘One of the reasons they don’t check the blind spot is when you’re first
teaching them to drive and you’re in a quiet area and there’s nothing in the
blind spot. They look, they know there’s nothing there, and then they give
up. And they think, what’s the point of me looking there? So you take
them somewhere where there’s a junction just back, and you pull them
over on the left, by that lamppost, and then you wait and you wait. And
then you say, right, okay, when it’s safe, pull away. And then you see the
car come down . . . and you have to lead them into the problem, sometimes
it’s like banging their head on a wall.’ [ADI]
However, there are clear limits on what ADIs can achieve here – reflecting the fact
that, ultimately, they cannot really put their learners at risk:
‘I think, for me anyway, there’s a central irony in that. When a young man
like this or that one is in the car with an instructor, part of our job,
probably you might say the most important part of our job when we’re
training people, when we’re teaching people, is to keep them safe,
ourselves safe and all other road users safe. That’s why we have dual
controls, that’s why we’re taught to intervene at the right time if it
becomes necessary. And, for me, as I say, there’s an irony in that, if I teach
somebody how to drive to a high standard, we should get through that
course of lessons without anything dangerous happening, really . . . So
they can learn, theoretically, of the kind of risks that they pose to others,
but they probably will not have actually been through it themselves. And,
my God, if you ever actually pulled out on a motorway slip road and
joined traffic at 70 mph, and not checked a blind spot, and suddenly found
that you’re about to smack into the side of somebody you haven’t seen,
which was something that happened to me as a new driver, you don’t
forget it. And you learn from something like that. So the point I’m trying
to make is that, in terms of influencing the attitude, we can sit and talk
until we are blue in the face about how potentially dangerous something a
pupil does is, and I still have that nagging anxiety at the back of my mind
about people like him [example of a learner with a bad attitude]. Has he
really learned the lesson? . . . I would never, ever, ever, and I’m sure my
colleagues would agree with this, deliberately put anybody in a position
where I know they’re going to get frightened. Because, for one thing, it’s
just completely irresponsible, because if they make a mistake and there
62
could be consequences for other people. But fear in some ways, as I said,
ironically, fear can be a very good teacher, there’s no doubt.’ [ADI]
The young people too recognised the limits of any kind of simulated experience
from which risk, and therefore fear, has been removed:
‘You have to do an emergency stop. But, in reality, you never know when
it’s coming. I’d stop a lot quicker if it was a child or a car. In the test,
you’re prepared for it.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘For some people, they need to make their own mistakes before they
learn.’ [F, 18, Delayer]
‘You could have a crash simulator. Before being in a car crash, I thought
it’d be good to have freedom, but being in a crash opened my eyes. Throw
people about a bit, give them a bit of whiplash, might just make them
think. But you can’t simulate losing a family member.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
Those young people who had themselves experienced the real thing and not
simulations were clear about the impacts it had had on their own attitudes and
confidence levels:
‘I’ve lost family members through other people. I wouldn’t put myself or
other people at risk. I would rather stay safe.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
‘I get panic attacks on motorways. I got into a crash with my dad when I
was young. My dad got caught doing 160. He’s got an extremely fast car,
an Aston Martin and a few Jags and everything. I shout at my brother
sometimes if he goes too fast . . . [The accident] had a big impact on me. I
was only 3 or 4 at the time. Now I’m driving, it makes me feel I should be
more responsible.’ [M, 17, Learner]
‘My friends died when driving. Before I was thinking: yeah, I’m going to
be mad. They were going 115 when they died, all three of them. I was just
thinking, it’s not just your own life at risk it’s other people as well. It
shouldn’t have had to happen the way it did to make me realise, but it’s
life. That will stay with me.’ [M, 19, Learner]
However, they also told stories about people for whom such experiences had had no
impact whatsoever:
‘I had a car crash last year. My mate who crashed is a maniac. I said
something to him before the crash. He is still driving in the same way,
though.’ [M, 18, Learner]
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
‘Having eight points has made no impact on my mate. He’s a typical rebel.
He wants to break the rules.’ [M, 17, Delayer]
‘My boyfriend’s lost friends through accidents, but he still drives badly.
His dad does too – probably why.’ [F, 17, Delayer]
Question: ‘Has his friends having accidents had any discernible impact, do
you think?’
‘On him? I think their attitude as young males is that they see it as ‘‘oh,
guess what’s happened’’ and see it as quite funny.’ [Mother of M, 19,
Learner]
‘It’s almost a badge of honour.’ [Father of F, 17, Learner]
Even experience, it seems, does not shake the hardest cases, leaving young people
and ADIs alike to suggest more punitive approaches for those who refuse to change:
‘After [my friend crashed with me in the car], I wouldn’t get in the car for
a month or two. My mate has a scar. But it’s had no impact on him as a
driver. Prison is the thing which would change him.’ [M, 18, Learner]
‘I think they should take your licence away for much longer. Like 20
years.’ [M, 20, Learner]
‘For the younger driver, if you speed or break the law, instead of being
silly and just having a fine, take the licence off them for a month, and the
more they do it, take it off for two months. Everybody needs a car these
days, and it is a privilege to have a car, not a right. But that’s the attitude.
You’ve got to say: ‘‘Okay, you need that car. You’ve done this wrong.
We’re taking the car off you for a month. See how you like that. Go onto
public transport and see how well you can get to work or not.’’’ [ADI]
4.4
Summary
According to the participants in this research, learning to drive has two basic
elements: mastering the activity of driving and getting the right attitude.
First hand experience – or experience of watching others drive – was felt to be
critical to mastering the activity of driving, with some participants (young people,
parents and ADIs) feeling that the current testing regime meant that some learners
did not get enough experience before passing. By contrast, many participants were
sceptical about the role of ‘theory’.
64
There was near universal agreement that the teaching of driving should be left to
professional instructors on the grounds that:
•
•
parents’ knowledge of driving is not up to scratch;
•
parents, lacking dual controls, are at risk with an inexperienced driver.
the instructor–learner relationship is more conducive to feedback and learning
than the parent–child relationship; and
There was, by contrast, some debate about the appropriateness and value of
supervised practice, with both parents and ADIs disagreeing on this.
A number of parents and ADIs wanted more parent–ADI communication. However,
a challenge arises from the fact that parents are both supports to the learning process
and paying clients. This can create a tension between the desire to ensure that the
young people get the right amount of experience (analogous with a learner’s concern
about readiness to pass the test) and the desire to ensure value-for-money (analogous
with a learner’s impatience to pass the test). The latter can create a scepticism about
the motives of ADIs among parents and young people, which colours
communication between them.
Experience was also felt to be critical to a person adopting the right attitude to being
a good learner and driver, with a strong emphasis on the need for concrete and
personal experiences in order to change attitudes. Some participants felt that this
might include talking to people with experience of crashes.
For their part, parents discussed using insurance payments and car type as possible
levers to build their children’s responsibility. The view was expressed, however, that
parents need more support or guidance in tackling dangerous driving in their
children. It was also noted that parents may not know about their children’s
dangerous driving.
Some ADIs go further, trying to engineer safe situations which nevertheless feel
dangerous in order to change the attitudes of the most worrying learners. However,
there are clear limits on what they can do – as they cannot actually put anyone at
risk. Many young people took the view that simulated risk, from which fear had
been removed, could never really change an attitude. Some young people and ADIs
also took the view that there is a hardcore of young drivers whose attitudes do not
change even if they actually have an accident, and who can only be stopped by more
punitive approaches.
65
5
BETTER DRIVERS
In this and our previous research (Christmas, 2007) we have described a number of
patterns of attitude and motivation in young drivers and their origins and influences
in pre-drivers and learners. The task in hand, however, is not to describe young
drivers but to change them. Too many young people are killed or injured on the
road, or kill or injure others. As we noted in the report on our earlier research, the
reasons for this disproportionate rate of accident and casualty among young people
are complex and very definitely not limited to young people’s attitudes and mindsets.
It is therefore important that the detailed implications of our findings should be
developed by those who are able to balance them against other perspectives,
including the more technical aspects of driving capability and road safety. Our
research has demonstrated, however, that attitude and mindset are a critical variable
in young people’s learning and driving behaviour, and that they should therefore be a
central consideration for any strategies to improve that learning and driving
behaviour – be those communication, learning, testing or enforcement strategies.
Therefore in this section we set out, on the basis of the understanding of attitude and
mindset developed in this and our previous research:
5.1
•
some critical challenges facing our current approaches to communication,
learning, testing and enforcement;
•
•
some important areas of opportunity; and
a pragmatic segmentation of young drivers by mindset which might be used to
target and tailor ongoing efforts.
Challenges
Our first phase of research (Christmas, 2007) revealed what might accurately be
described as a crisis of credibility facing the current testing and training regime.
Indeed, the majority of young drivers we spoke to believe that ‘you only really learn
to drive after you have passed the test’. This second phase of research has
confirmed that this point of view is shared by pre-drivers and learners: when asked if
passing the test made one a good driver, pre-drivers and learners unanimously (and
swiftly) answered ‘No’.
It is worth noting that the idea of continuing to learn after passing is not in itself
problematic. In fact, this is exactly what the model of ‘lifelong learning’ implies. In
this model, passing the test provides a foundation for safe driving, but drivers,
especially in the novice period, need to continue to practice, reflect on and improve
their driving abilities. Unfortunately, our analysis of the attitudes, perceptions and
motivations of young drivers, pre-drivers and learners shows that we are a very long
way away from the ‘lifelong learning’ model in most cases. Far from being
66
perceived as a foundation for good driving, the test is perceived by many as a hoop
to be jumped through; and post-test learning is too often reduced to learning from
accidents and near misses.
What is going wrong? Our first phase of research (Christmas, 2007) suggested four
critical ‘gaps’ created by current approaches to driver learning and testing, and this
second phase of research has reinforced these:
1. The relevance gap. Few young people – pre-drivers, learners or novices – see
the standards in the test (and other rules of driving) as relevant to ‘real driving’:
(a) Young people see the extent to which these standards are flouted by
other drivers – including their parents (the models on which many
young people seem to base their understanding of good and bad
drivers) and, sometimes, their instructors. For many young people, this
raises questions about whether these standards are meaningful.
(b) The perceived ‘tick-box’ approach to testing, with an emphasis on
‘doing it by the book’, sits uncomfortably with young people’s
recognition that good driving is about good situational judgement, and
is out of step with the kinds of learning young people are increasingly
experiencing in the rest of their lives.
(c) The focus of the test on the physical activity of manoeuvring the car
safely and anticipating hazards fails to match the emotionally charged
experience of young novices entering a social space shared with other
drivers and road users – although, as we have seen in this work, most
young people only seem to become fully aware of this mismatch after
they have passed the test.
(d) Taken together, the above issues fuel a perceived contrast between the
law of the road – at worst, this is seen as a series of pointless
bureaucratic restrictions – and the lore of the road – the real
conventions of good driving as practised.
2. The measures gap. The test itself, being a pass/fail hurdle which is widely
perceived to lack relevance, is not seen by most young people as a measure of
how good a driver one is. This leaves people reaching for measures of ability
which are actually counter-productive from a policy point of view – such as how
many lessons they take to pass the test. Post-test, without their instructor giving
them feedback, young people have no obvious way of measuring their growing
(or diminishing) competence as drivers. Most therefore rely on a totally
unreliable measure of competence: their own level of confidence. This creates a
bizarre situation in which the feeling of confidence serves as a justification for
feeling confident – a vicious circle of overconfidence which, in some cases, may
be brought to a halt only by an accident. The origins of this pattern may lie in
pre-test experiences, where young people form opinions of good and bad drivers
based not on standards but on their feelings of safety, and the confidence, care
and superiority projected by whoever is driving them.
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
3. The incentives gap. For young people who are not highly motivated to improve
their driving (perhaps because they believe they have talent or because they
simply do not care), there are no real incentives to engage in the learning process
beyond the minimum required to pass the test. Indeed, there are number of
positive disincentives, including the cost of lessons and the fact that passing
after fewer lessons is seen by many as evidence of ability. Similarly, there are
few meaningful positive incentives to continue improving one’s abilities as a
driver after the test. Enforcement and communications activity focuses instead
on the consequences of getting things wrong – penalties, physical harm or the
loss of a no-claims bonus – and so incentivises conformity rather than
development. Moreover, the consequences highlighted seem remote and unreal
to many young people, especially in comparison to immediate and familiar
consequences, such as the impact of their behaviour on peer perceptions. If a
young person has a belief in their own innate talent as a driver, they will also
discount any risks as ‘not applying to me’. Efforts to change the behaviour of
young people like these with more and more graphic presentations of the
consequences of accidents are unlikely to have much impact, and, at some point,
may also risk scaring and alienating those young people who are susceptible to
this kind of message.
4. The motivations gap. Many young people believe that, even without much
experience, their driving abilities are already beyond the need for improvement.
These young people, who believe that they are naturally talented at driving, are
the most likely to discard learning from the test, to believe that the safety
rationale for rules does not apply to them, and to take risks which are massively
beyond their capabilities. The belief in talent is, if anything, amplified by the
emphasis on the physical activity of driving in the testing process, and may get
an added boost from early success in mastering the physical manipulation of the
car in an off-road or other relatively safe environment.
To tackle these gaps and address their role in perpetuating unsafe driving behaviour
among young people, we will need to do more than just make the test tougher or
spell out the risks of dangerous driving to young people (though these tactics may
well be justified for other reasons). We need to change the paradigm of driver
learning.
5.2
Opportunities
As well as clarifying the challenges faced by existing approaches to driver learning
and testing, our current research puts the spotlight on some specific opportunities
that might form an important part of future strategies for better learning.
In particular, a number of the young pre-drivers talked about their real interest in
opportunities to develop driving skills at school or college. There was, however, a
strong emphasis on learning by doing. For many participants, indeed, the attraction
68
of having a chance to learn driving at school or college lies precisely in the fact that
driving is a practical skill, requiring hands-on learning – in contrast to much other
learning. In line with this, those who did suggest taking ‘theory’ classes at school
generally did so not through enthusiasm but through a desire to get this part of the
current test out of the way as quickly as possible. This emphasis on practical
learning has important potential consequences for any school- or college-based
driver learning: without a strongly practical element, learning opportunities at
school or college might lose much of their potential appeal. A number of
participants also suggested importing other aspects of their learning experience
elsewhere into driver learning, such as modularity or greater personalisation. On the
last point, the segmentation offered in the next sub-section might prove a useful
starting point.
Some participants also suggested that aspects of driving and, in particular, road use
might sit sensibly in existing areas of the curriculum such as PSHE or Citizenship –
interesting suggestions, given the importance of the social activity of driving in the
accounts of young people who are already driving. In particular, we have drawn
attention in this report to the important role played by young people’s experience of
being a passenger in the formation of their views about good driving: the starting
point for being an expert driver is to be an ‘expert passenger’. There is a real
opportunity here to tackle young passengers’ abilities to observe and assess the
driving behaviour of those around them, and also to tackle the ‘double insulation’ of
young people in the passenger seat (see Section 2.3).
Undoubtedly, the people who drive young people – and in particular parents – have
a critical role to play here as well. Many of the parents we spoke to had clear views
on the important role they might play when their children were learning to drive, for
instance through supervised practice. However, none of them seemed aware of the
equally important role they play before their children started learning to drive, by
acting as role models of good (or bad) driving. We are in no way suggesting that we
‘blame the parents’ here, but, undoubtedly, there is an opportunity to help parents
think about the role they might play in preparing their children to be safe drivers.
Any such efforts might also build on the existing appetite of at least some parents
for more guidance and support during the learning process – for instance, on how
to select the right instructor, how to communicate with the instructor, and how to
balance the roles of being a paying client and a support for learning – and after the
test – for instance, on how to negotiate the safe use of a family car or on who should
pay for insurance. (Our research was not designed as a best practice, but our
conversations with road safety officers alerted us to some excellent work which is
already being carried out by LARSOA members in this area.)
Among those we spoke to – both young pre-drivers and parents – we found
evidence of a desire to learn more. Our research was not designed to investigate the
attitudes of ADIs beyond their perceptions of young drivers, but we believe there
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
may also be opportunities to think about how this group also learn. In particular, a
number of the experienced ADIs we spoke to talked about the ways in which they
tailored their approaches to the attitudes and aptitudes of each young person. On
further probing, these ADIs stated that this tailoring was something they had ‘picked
up’ through their experience, rather than something they had been given specific
guidance on. In line with the emphasis on personalisation in other areas of
education, there may be real opportunities to equip ADIs from the very beginnings
of their careers with the tools to adapt their style to different learners, and to find
effective ways to incentivise the use of these tools. Indeed, this might be one way in
which a segmentation along the lines of that offered in the next section might be put
to direct practical use.
5.3
Different learners, different approaches
Young people, as a group, are as diverse as any other section of the population. A
number of participants in our workshops commented on the stereotyping which
young people can face (and not only in relation to driving). In this report and our
previous report (Christmas , 2007), we have done our best to draw out themes and
perspectives shared by large numbers of the participants in our workshop. However,
it is worth remembering that each of the young people we met was a unique
individual with their own particular history, influences and motivations, who
approached learning to drive in their own unique way.
A segmentation is a pragmatic response to this diversity, which seeks to illuminate
some of the differences that really make a difference, while giving us a practical
basis to develop effective policies and strategies that will be effective not just for
individuals but across entire populations. In offering a segmentation of young predrivers, learners and drivers at the conclusion of our research, we would like to
stress that we are not claiming to have uncovered unchangeable personality
differences between young people. More research is needed to validate the proposed
segmentation and scale the segments, and also to learn more about why a young
person comes to be in a given segment, and whether and how she or he might
change over longer periods of time. In the meantime, if we are to avoid a one-sizefits-all approach to communications, learning and testing, it is very helpful to know
more about the S, M, L and XL for which we will need to cut our cloth. This is what
we offer below: a simple, pragmatic classification of the key mindsets identified in
this work, drawing on distinctions made throughout our two reports.
Our proposed segmentation has five segments. For ease of reference we have given
each segment a short name. The segments are summarised in Table 5.1. As our work
was qualitative and the sample sizes (while very large for a qualitative study of this
nature) were too small for statistical analysis, we are not able to provide reliable
estimates of the number of young people in each segment. Our experience – in line
with data from other sources – would suggest that segments 1 and 5 are significantly
smaller than segments 2, 3 and 4.
70
5.3.1 Segment 1: rule observers
Although very few in number, it is important to remember that there were a few
young people in our research who expressed a real desire to follow the rules of
driving and maintain the standards of good driving shared with them in the test, for
no reason other than the fact that they are the rules and standards. For young people
in this segment, good driving is about following rules and standards.
This is the group for which current approaches to learning and testing are – at least
from the attitudinal point of view – best adapted. As long as young people falling in
this segment are correctly informed about what the rules and standards are and are
given the skills to stick with them, and as long as the rules and standards really do
describe safe driving, then these young people will be safe drivers. Unfortunately, as
we noted above, the evidence indicates that this segment may be one of the smallest.
If this is true, it implies that our current one-size-fits-all approach to learning and
testing fits the most unusually shaped people.
5.3.2 Segment 2: risk minimisers
Young people in the second segment are unimpressed by laws and standards in and
of themselves, but they are, unlike many other young people, very aware of the
potential consequences of dangerous driving (and will therefore embrace those laws
and standards for which they see a clear safety rationale). For young people in this
segment, good driving is risk-free driving.
These are the young people who, when pre-drivers or learners, feel concerned about
their readiness to pass (see Section 3.1). As described in our previous report
(Christmas, 2007), they will experience driving without an instructor as a loss rather
than a liberation, and will continue to drive cautiously. One of the things that may
most annoy them, indeed, is the way in which other drivers pressurise them to do
things that they are not comfortable with, such as drive faster than they wish to. This
is the segment for which campaigns such as Think! are likely to be most effective
(although participants in this group reminded us that it is important not to scare
them off driving by overdoing the message about the risks of driving).
5.3.3 Segment 3: good neighbours
Young people in the third segment, as in the second, are unimpressed by laws and
standards in and of themselves. Unlike those in the second segment, however, they
also give little thought to the risks of driving, being confident in their own abilities
as a driver. Instead, their focus is on the social activity of driving, and on the need to
show consideration and patience for other road users (and will therefore embrace
those rules and standards which they see as being in line with what they see as the
social norms of driving). For young people in this segment, good driving is sociable
driving.
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
This segment is very obvious among those young people who are already driving (in
our first phase of research, for instance). For instance, this is the group most likely to
talk positively about the informal instruction they received regarding the ‘real rules
of the road’, or to highlight such things as lane-hogging or discourtesy in their
definitions of bad driving. Among pre-drivers, however, awareness of the social
activity of driving is, as we have seen, largely absent, making the future members of
this segment less immediately obvious. Our hypothesis is that these are the young
people who, as passengers, respond most to the concern showed by a driver (rather
than their confidence or superiority). These are also, therefore, the young people
who are susceptible to positive as well as negative peer pressure (see Section 2.4.1).
As the emphasis placed by young people in this segment on ‘informal instruction’
shows, our current approaches to learning and testing seem to be poorly suited to
this segment. The segment is also likely to be largely unmoved by communication
efforts which focus on the risk of injury and, as comments in our workshops would
suggest, alienated by enforcement approaches which ignore anti-social acts such as
lane-hogging while penalising other acts which are felt not to be anti-social.
This, however, is unfortunate, as the basic motivation of this group of young people
to behave sociably on the road is an essentially positive one – even if their high
levels of confidence and sometimes idiosyncratic assessments of what counts as
sociable may lead them to drive dangerously in practice. Ways in which this cluster
of young people might more effectively be engaged with good driving behaviour
include:
72
•
offering them strong role models of sociable driving to challenge some of the
existing role models (to which we shall return in discussion of the next
segment);
•
encouraging young pre-drivers in this group to develop their natural empathy
and overcome the double insulation of being a passenger;
•
placing more emphasis on the social act of driving in the formal elements of
learning and testing;
•
ensuring that risk-based communication campaigns also make it clear just how
anti-social it is to engage in risky behaviour, however confident one may feel;
•
providing a clear sociability rationale for rules and standards, alongside a safety
rationale; and
•
enforcing sociable as well as safe driving.
Before moving on to the final clusters, we should pause to note that the first three
segments align with three basic reasons why someone might decide not to engage in
a certain kind of driving behaviour:
•
•
•
it’s illegal or substandard;
it’s risky; and
it’s anti-social.
As an aside, we note that young people in the first cluster may or may not also be
concerned about risky or anti-social behaviour – just as young people in the second
cluster may or may not be concerned about anti-social behaviour. We have adopted
this ‘cascade’ approach to segmentation because it is the most pragmatic one in the
circumstances. There are a small number of young people you can influence merely
by putting the right laws and standards in place; then, of those who you can not
influence in this way, there are some you can influence by talking about risks; then,
of those remaining, there are some who are at least concerned about being sociable.
Unfortunately, this leaves a number of young people – a substantial number, as our
own experience suggests – for whom none of the above approaches will work. We
propose dividing these young people into two further segments.
5.3.4 Segment 4: God’s gifts
Young drivers in the fourth segment do not care about rules and standards, nor do
they care about the risks of driving or other people on the road. However, they do
still care about driving well. For young people in this segment, good driving is
confident driving.
Unfortunately, this is also a group who have confidence in abundance. As
passengers, they identify good driving with the projection of confidence and
superiority – which also makes them impervious to positive peer pressure (see
Section 2.4.1) – and will adopt some version of the talent model. As drivers, their
chief complaint will be about those other drivers who are too cautious or nervous
and so get in the way. Their confidence, meanwhile, will serve (in the vicious circle
identified in our previous research) as sufficient evidence that they really are as good
as they think they are until they have a bad accident, are close to losing their licence,
or change their attitudes as a result of some major life transition (such as having
children). At which point, our experience suggests, they may begin to adopt some of
the characteristics of a risk minimiser.
It should be noted that this segment, like the third segment, has a lot to say about the
social activity of driving – and in our first phase of research we failed to notice the
subtle but important difference between the two segments on this point. Reanalysing the data from that first phase of research in the light of this second phase,
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
the difference was readily apparent. When young people in segment 3 (good
neighbours) talk about the social activity of driving, they are talking about the
norms to which they themselves aspire. In contrast, when young people in segment 4
(god’s gifts) talk about the social activity of driving, they are basically talking about
the shortcomings of the other drivers who get in their way.
As we saw in Section 4.3, it is young drivers in this segment whom some ADIs try
to shake by engineering scary situations. There is some sense to this tactic: as noted
above, the real experience of an accident is one of the things that may actually
change the mindset of a young person in this segment and so move them to another,
safer segment. Approaches on these lines may be successful with some young
people in this segment, probably those who are already on the borderline of the riskminimiser segment. Unfortunately, the evidence offered by participants suggests that
there are many in this segment whose attitudes will not be changed even by real
accidents.
So what can be done to address this critical (and probably sizeable) segment? One
option may be to go back to the root of the mindset, and the projection of confidence
and superiority as a driver. Our culture appears to be full of role models and
messages which valorise confidence and superiority in drivers – what we might call
the Top Gear vision of good driving. A programme which ranks celebrities on the
speed at which they can drive round a race track may be good entertainment, but it
must be legitimate at least to ask what kind of impact the lauding of the fast and the
gentle ridiculing of the slow has on the prevailing culture of driving and so,
indirectly, on the numbers of young people killed on the road (and people killed by
them). As we suggested in our first report, the only effective way to tackle this kind
of negative role modelling may be to change the direction of the ridicule. The
simple fact is that young people in segment 4 are unlikely to be moved by being told
how risky or anti-social their behaviour is, but they will be moved if their behaviour,
far from projecting superiority, starts to make them look like idiots.
Affecting this kind of cultural change is incredibly hard, of course, especially for the
Government, which does not start from a position of credibility with many young
people. However, there is one important force which could be co-opted by an
effective campaign in this area: peer pressure. A number of our participants talked
about times they had asked peers to drive more slowly and less riskily, but had been
ignored. By expressing fear, they only boost the sense of superiority in a young
driver from this segment. Equipped with a language in which to ridicule and laugh,
rather than merely express fear, however, these passengers might become a powerful
challenge to that sense of superiority. We believe it would be essential to involve
young people themselves in the development of such a language, including, most
importantly of all, young people who fall into this fourth segment. (While this is not
a best practice review, we note that some work has already been done in this area by
LARSOA members.)
74
There may also be a more positive approach to young people in this fourth segment.
After all, there is nothing per se wrong with wanting to project that one is a superior
driver, provided one’s definition of superior driving is a safe one. The real problem
with young drivers in the fourth segment is that their main measure of superiority is
confidence. Indeed, it is on this segment that the impact of the measures gap (see
Section 5.1) is most obvious, and for whom the positive impact of a genuinely
motivational graded scale of driving ability might therefore be most beneficial in the
long term. Young people who boasted about having passed their Level 10 driving
proficiency test might be a little irritating, but they might also be considerably safer
than young people who project superiority by taking risks that they are not
competent to handle.
Getting young people interested in some kind of scale of driving proficiency when
all they really want is a licence to drive would, of course, probably prove as hard as
implementing the kind of culture change discussed above. Again, however, there are
two important forces which could be co-opted. The first force is money. The idea
here is not a new one, as it is already applied in the Pass Plus scheme: get the extra
training and your insurance premiums are reduced. The challenge is to find ways to
embed this approach across the entire training regime. The second force is the
licence to drive itself. Again, the idea is not a new one, as the number of points a
novice driver can get on their licence has now been reduced from twelve to six. But
why not take this principle further, and give a newly passed driver zero available
points: any mistakes and the novice will lose their licence – a severe but highly
effective deterrent for most young people. Only by undertaking further training,
getting more experience or demonstrating required behaviour would people
gradually garner more licences to make mistakes (which is what the points system
effectively amounts to).
One theme is worth drawing out here. To engage this group we need to create new
risks associated with dangerous driving, risks which are much less grave than
accidents but also much more likely to happen. This is the basic principle behind
fines and other enforcement activity, but other levers are available, as we have
discussed: insurance premiums, points on licence and, most powerful of all perhaps,
peer pressure. Pulling these levers and tackling this fourth segment will undoubtedly
be difficult, but it will also be critical if we are to have an impact on the levels of
accident and casualty among young drivers.
5.3.5 Segment 5: nightmare drivers
Young drivers in the fifth and final segment, like those in the fourth, do not care
about rules and standards, nor do they care about the risks of driving or other people
on the road. Unlike those in the fourth segment, they do not care about driving well
either. For the relatively small number of young people in this segment, good
driving is entirely irrelevant.
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Feeling Safe, Itching to Drive: Pre-driver and Learner Perspectives on Driving and Learning
Clearly, this is an important segment from a road safety point of view. Indeed, young
people in this segment will be among the most dangerous drivers on the road. It is
also the least tractable segment. For each of the four segments discussed previously,
it is possible to identify some aspect that young people in the segment care about,
and so is an attitudinal lever which can be used as the basis for communication and
learning strategies. No such levers are available for the fifth segment. The only way
to influence their behaviour is through credible and consistent enforcement activity,
although even this may fail in some cases.
Given this, we believe it is important not to be distracted by the existence of this
segment from the huge opportunities that exist to make young people in the third
and fourth segments safer drivers. Undoubtedly we have to find ways to tackle
‘nightmare drivers’, but it is among the overconfident ‘good neighbours’ and ‘God’s
gifts’ that we may achieve the biggest reductions in accidents and casualties for any
given investment of resources, especially in communication and learning.
Table 5.1 summarises the five segments discussed in this section.
76
Table 5.1: Proposed segmentation of learners
Segment 1:
rule observers
Concerns
Rules
Risks
Sociability
Driving well
Segment 2:
risk minimisers
High
Low
High
High
High
Driving values
Conformity
Caution
Pet hates
Not doing things the way
they are meant to be done
Other drivers pushing
them to take risks
Segment 3:
good neighbours
Segment 5:
nightmare drivers
Low
Low
High
High
Low
Low
Low
High
Low
Low
Low
Low
Consideration
Patience
Poor signalling, lanehogging, discourtesy, bad
parking
Confidence
Superiority
Nervous or incompetent
drivers getting in the way
None
Overconfidence
Impatience
Accidents
Life events
Nearly on 12 points
Not caring
Create a language in
which to ridicule
overconfidence
Address the measures
gap with real measures of
good driving
Link these to other
motivators, such as
money
Credible and consistent
enforcement
Likely causes of bad Not knowing rules
driving
Existing checks on
Instruction for test
bad driving
Highway Code
Not knowing risks
Getting flustered
Instruction on risks
Think!
Overconfidence
Possible levers
Communicate risks – but
do not overdo it
Provide safety rationale
for rules
Provide low-cost chances
to improve skills
New role models of good
driving
Encourage ‘empathy’ in
pre-driver and driver
learning
Link safety to anti-social
driving in communications
Provide sociability
rationale for rules
Enforce sociable as well
as safe driving
Make sure the rules really
reflect good driving
Communicate the rules
clearly
Segment 4:
God’s gifts
‘Informal’ instruction
Passengers
Prangs and incidents
Any constraint on what I
want to do
Few, if any
77
6
REFERENCES
Christmas, S. (2007) The Good, the Bad and the Talented: Young Drivers’
Perspectives on Good Driving and Learning to Drive. Road Safety Research Report
No. 74. London: Department for Transport.
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